Oprah.com: How to Raise a Carefree Kid, Even If You’re Terrified

I was in our backyard, flipping burgers, Dick Dale twanging through kitchen windows, when every parent’s nightmare arrived, all crunching metal and screeching tires. A red ball had rolled into the street. Sean, age 6, the older of my two boys, who’d been playing out front with his brother and three friends, volunteered to fetch it.

He got midway across the street and picked up the ball as a Toyota Corolla sped toward him, doing 30 (the cops later estimated) in a 15-mile-an-hour “Slow Children Pla...