1) I took that as giving kids the freedom to explore without dictating a path for them. 
2) Yes if 1) is the case. 

I think some of the confusion here is whether you're looking at it from a top-down approach, ie. a parent as a dictator. For me, parents are just guides - let them explore the world in their own way, and they'll come to conclusions themselves. You shouldn't stop them from exploring, even in the name of protection —sure, you don't want them to fall off a cliff, and you want to be firm with your boundaries, but my point is minimal intervention — that's how you create blind spots, or as some people would say, entitlement and just generally peopleq with no empathy or awareness of others. Tbh most of us (parents) don't know what tf we're doing, so my approach is to be humble about it and observe, learn, be a good example, be water (as Bruce Lee says), and hope for the best. It's like planting a seed, there's no guarantee what turns out even if you give the seed all the "right" things. In short: I'm not a believer of helicopter parenting because that's what breeds the 40-year-old kids everyone's so worried about (including me).