(CBS) Letter from London is Larry Miller's weekly look at news from across the pond.

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Barney Baloney is a professional clown who can't blow bubbles any more. Seems it's a safety hazard, because kids might slip on the slick residue and hurt themselves. Mr. Baloney can't get insurance. He says bureaucracy is taking the fun out of children's lives.

They say kids will be kids. But that's only if adults let them — let them fall down so they can learn to pick themselves up. British parents have become so frightened that something terrible might happen to little Dick and Jane that an increasing number won't let them walk to school by themselves, even if it's around the corner.

Britain's Children's Society surveyed parents and found that nearly half are stopping their kids under 14 going out to play, because they are so worried about their safety. They worry their children could be hurt, or targeted by abductors or pedophiles.

The real danger, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, is that today's kids will grow into adults with stunted development. This hardly-radical group argues it's better for a child to fall out of a tree, skin a knee and break a wrist, than get repetitive strain injury from computer and video game addiction.

One little 9-year-old girl interviewed on TV said she didn't want to leave her front garden because there are "rapists out there." Her well-meaning parents are storing up a heap of trouble for their daughter when she does dare to go beyond the gate on her own. How will she know who to trust and who not to?

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In fact, children under 16 can often be at far more risk staying home than going out to play. British Home Office figures show that over 90% of child sexual abuse is committed by a person known to their victim, such as a family member or a trusted neighbor.

Similarly, 85-90% of all child homicides are committed, not by strangers lurking in the shadows, but by people far closer to home.

Although numbers don't seem to be available to compare, say, the 1960s with 2007, a Home Office official felt that, if anything, crime by strangers against children is less today, though media coverage makes it appear to be more.

So what do these kids, who aren't allowed to go out and play, do at home? They get fat.

The latest research indicates British kids are among the fattest in the world. Doctors here say parental overfeeding is child abuse. With type 2 diabetes becoming commonplace in very young children, the British Medical Association is debating whether obese kids should be taken away by social services. Some already are.

There is an alternative, however. They could be let off their leash, be allowed to run, play and explore on their own and with their friends, and grow into emotionally and physically healthy adults, who one day will remember slipping on Barney Baloney's bubbles.

By Larry Miller
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