Kids learn from failure. It’s letting them fail and learn that grows strong adults.
Some risks can be mitigated. Learning to tumble and take a fall, for example, mitigates risks of falling well into the elderly years.
And as for 5 or 7 year old, yes. Or flip to the other side— traditional society, including indigenous societies, start training their toddlers on chores. Toddlers already want to help, and these are often behaviors they are already doing, like pulling clothes from laundry baskets.
Five year old and seven year olds are capable. In Japan, two year olds are sent on errands.
And, I have heard at least one story of an American family where the mother had her 7 and 8 year old kid take over meal planning and prep for dinner, and paying the bills. (She didn’t just throw them into the deep end either).
If you put your child in a bubble you not only stunt their development you also rob them of so much joy.
What if I get HIV from a needle at a park bench? Do I need to inspect every park bench I sit on with UV light at night and leather gloves to be sure?
Where do you draw your line. Clearly your lines are different than others.
You should consider that their lines are based on rational investigation of the risk. Is yours?
https://letgrow.org/crime-statistics/
The tl;dr is that helicopter parenting is relatively new — only something that's come into play in the last few decades — and in all the time before that kids had far more freedom to roam compared to today. Even factoring in an uptick in the murder rate in the last couple years that came about during Covid policy, it's still half of what is was in the early 90s or prior to that.
It seems like the world is more dangerous now because of the outsized attention crime gets in media, but objectively speaking, it's not.
And keeping kids at home on their screens is having definite negative consequences on their maturation and later ability to succeed in the world. Here's a good article on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k
Is Japan safer than the US on average? Yes. Is the US so unsafe that sending a 7-year old to the neighbouring kids' homes should be frown upon?
Ideas this author generated include — sending an older child along; secretly following to observe without intervening on anything less than catastrophic risks; sending the kid to neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar (and acquaint them to the neighborhood), and so forth.