Treasuring the Halloween experience

Halloween always ranks high on my list as one of the ultimate parenting experiences – at least until our kids hit the pre-teen years.

When our children were little, it was relatively easy getting them ready for Halloween. We’d decide on a costume, take some photos, grab a flashlight and hit the streets. But now that our boys have stopped trick-or-treating, and our daughter is a pre-teen, the innocent days of Scooby Doo, Thomas the Tank Engine and Cinderella are behind us.

For our boys, Halloween costumes were a breeze -- a black cape was all they needed. But when it came to creating a trick-or-treating strategy – watch out. The boys and their friends would spend a crazy amount of time right before the big night deciding what neighborhoods to hit, and calculating the exact route they’d follow to maximize their time and takings. My husband compares our sons’ trick-or-treating strategies to the work of political activists who study each “district” to see where they can mine the most votes.

But with our daughter, it’s a different story. Her Halloween planning starts in August – at the height of back-to-school stress. When I’m out worrying about notebooks and erasable pens, my daughter is checking out the blonde wigs, make-up, sequined costumes and high heels. She’s also making a first draft of trick-or-treating and costume plans that will likely change at least a dozen times once our daughter and her friends start comparing

Last year is a good example. The girls all decided to be Greek goddesses or characters. Sounds easy, right? The only problem was that once the obvious choices of Medusa and Aphrodite were taken, the other girls were challenged to uncover other goddesses. So here I was with my daughter, clicking through goddess-guide.com, trying to talk her into being Hera, Hestia or Artemis, and then trying to figure out how to make her costume different from everyone else’s.

In the end, with the exception of a few snakes displayed atop one friend’s head, all of the girls looked the same in their white robes and gold belts (especially after special props were abandoned to make it easier to carry their heavy bags of candy). But despite the costume hassles, benefits emerged from everyone’s planning: the girls knew exactly who they were and the characters they were representing, and they learned how to compromise and support each other along the way.

When I was my daughter’s age, I didn’t care much about my costume – I was in the boys’ camp. To me, it was all about the candy. I was more than happy to throw on some baggy jeans and a sweatshirt and call myself a hobo. And despite trying to get my friends to think the same way, it rarely worked.

My best friend once dressed up as a die that took her many days to create. At first I was envious of her costume. It was meticulously painted white with black dots, and she looked so cute with her little arms sticking straight out the sides. But I soon realized that she couldn’t fit through doorways to grab her share of candy, and I’d have to carry her bag all night. I knew then that my quick and easy costume strategy was the way to go.

Despite the extra work that Halloween requires, you just can’t beat seeing the joy and happiness it brings children, and that experience was always in high demand. Each year while carving our pumpkins, my husband and I would have heated negotiations over who’d be the one taking the kids out trick or treating, and who’d stay home to give out candy. Neither of us wanted to miss seeing our kids running from door to door with big smiles on their faces, and watching the joy they brought neighbors. It was also a lot more fun counting (and eating) candy when you could remind your children who gave them those coveted full-size chocolate bars.

Now that our youngest has banned us from tagging along with her on Halloween night, my husband and I will no longer need our usual trick-or-treating negotiations. Instead, we’ll probably end up being “Halloween-night empty nesters” who sit at home with a bowl full of candy negotiating over who will answer the door.

As the years fly, we know that it’s only a matter of time until our daughter decides to abandon her childhood Halloween traditions. But until then, we’re happy to carve those pumpkins, help with her costume, and “borrow” from her trick-or-treating bounty. We’ll do whatever it takes to hold on to the Halloween parenting experience – and our Cinderella -- for as long as possible.