Protecting, Teaching, and Letting go

I was thinking today about parenting in terms of protecting, teaching and letting go. There are definitely particular times in our children's lives when we do each of these and at the risk of being terribly simplistic, I'm thinking that doing the wrong one at the wrong time is at the heart of "insane parenting". I'd like to expand more on this idea, but I'm also interested in what others think. So what do you think?