Forget all the guys in Bernie Madoff masks and tutus. If you want to see something really scary on Halloween, come to my apartment around 9 p.m.I'm letting my kids eat unwrapped candy.
They can eat any homemade goodies they get, too, and that unholy of unholies: candy where the wrapper is slightly torn. And on the very off chance they get an apple, they can gnaw it to the core, so long as there's not a razor-sized, dripping gash on the side.
Which always seemed like it would be a kind of give-away that something was amiss.
It's not that I'm cavalier about safety. I'm just a sucker -- so to speak -- for the facts. And the fact is: No child has been poisoned by a stranger's goodies on Halloween, ever, as far as we can determine. Joel Best, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware, studied November newspapers from 1958 to the present, scouring them for any accounts of kids felled by felonious candy. And...he didn't find any. He did find one account of a boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix his father gave him. Dad did it for the insurance money and, Best says, he probably figured that so many kids are poisoned on Halloween, no one would notice one more.
Well, they did and dad was executed. That's Texas for you. Another boy died after he got into his uncle's heroin stash and relatives tried to make it look like he'd been killed by candy. And that's it.
Now look at how the fear that our nice, normal-seeming neighbors might actually be moppet-murdering psychopaths has turned the one kiddie independence day of the year into yet another excuse to micromanage childhood.
It's not just the fact that churches and community centers are throwing parties so that kids don't go out on their own. It's not just the fact that Bobtown, Pennsylvania has gone so far as to "cancel" Halloween altogether -- for the sake of "safety." (The authorities there were surprised to find this decision unpopular.) It's not even that those of us who'd like to hand out homemade cookies know they'll be instantly tossed in the trash.
No, the truly spooky thing is that Halloween has become a riot of warnings that are way scarier than the holiday itself. The website Halloween-Safety.com recommends that if your child is carrying a fake butcher knife, make sure the tip is "smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen upon."
Excuse me? Has anyone ever seen a knife land blade-side up? And then fallen on it? Meantime, schools around the country are sending this note home to parents: "Please, no scary costumes." In England last year a man was ordered by his landlord to take down his lawn decorations because the zombies were too "realistic."
In other words: They looked too much like...real zombies?
Our fears are so overblown they'd be laughable if they didn't sound so much like the fears that are haunting us the rest of the year. Fears that have lead to parents to wait with their kids at the school bus stop, and keep them inside on sunny afternoons. Fears that make parents forbid their kids from skipping down the street to invite a friend out to play. That's the everyday version of Halloween fear: The fear that we cannot trust our children amongst our neighbors for one single second because, who knows, they might be pedophiles just waiting to pounce.
If you want to see what childhood is becoming, look how at what Halloween has already become: A parent-planned, climate-controlled, child-coddled, corporate-sponsored "event," where kids are considered too delicate to even survive the sight of a scary costume.
If you want to see what childhood is becoming, look how at what Halloween has already become: A parent-planned, climate-controlled, child-coddled, corporate-sponsored "event," You know. Like if someone came dressed as a slightly torn Snickers.
Skenazy is founder of freerangekids.com and author of "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry."
Jamie Lee Curtis: Trick or Treat or Terrify?
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Poor Mom dealt with her demons (figurativ
Toronto Police are warning parents to take a closer look at their child's Halloween treats after a North York family discovered a razor blade in a loot bag.
Police say the youth's parents discovered the razor just after 10 p.m. Saturday night while they were checking his treats. No one was injured.
The razor was discovered in the area of Leslie Street and Bannatyne Drive.
Similar incidents were also reported in Whitby, north of Toronto, and Nova Scotia.
On Saturday, an Annapolis County woman found told police she found a razor blade hidden within an apple that her child received.
Police there say they’ve seized the items and are investigat
The Nova Scotia youngster had been trick-or-t
In Whitby, a two-inch needle was found in a Tootsie Roll. The candy wrapper appeared to be tampered with and the parent found the needle.
Last Halloween, police in that region reported five instances of pills found inside Smarties boxes given out as trick-or-t
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And what the hell are "Smarties" anyway? Sounds like some kind of drug to me; probably a sedative that calms them while waiting in line for health care.
We had neighbors who made their own treats, we got tons of candy and a lot of community presence with everybody making sure they were home with candy and costumes. Entire blocks would be decked out.
Then came the paranoia and the weirdness and the inevitable corporate marketing co-opt of the holiday...
But Halloween isn't alone... all the other holidays were "commercia
And other things like the Olympics, a gathering of the worlds best amateur athletes..
Its about marketing and mass media and there is a special place in hell for those folks, I think...
I just went out with my daughter - it's still all there - decorated houses, meeting the neighbors, fun costumes, etc.
It was FUN. year after year complete strangers would come up to me in the weeks preceding halloween to inquire if I would again do an insane setup.
There were about 150 kids in the area, but we'd get as many as 750 kids at our door.
Keep it scary, keep it fun.
Excuse me? Has anyone ever seen a knife land blade-side up? And then fallen on it?"
That's a silly criticism. I'd guess the worry is that somebody might fall while holding a knife, not that they'd drop the knife and then fall on it.
Another element which bears more explicitly on the issue of dangers to children, involves the real dangers to children - ones that are difficult to guard against. Modern life is full of dangers we see in our newspapers
My point in listing the problems above is that they are complex and difficult to address. It's easier to treat them like the "Elephant in the living room". So then what? We are left with a malaise, the nameless dread that our kids are in danger. And it is nameless precisely because we as society have turned our back on any serious attempt to address it. So then what. We make up imitation problems. Aren't dangers of our own invention so much easier to take action against then the oh-do-mess
-Steve
As a childless old man of 62 I sit as a spectator to all this and wonder how the business of parenting ever became the domain of clinical paranoids. Part of the answer probably comes from the wave of suburbaniz
I'm 'older', from the generation of "go out and be back before the street lights come on'. My daughter's 9 and is rarely more than 50 feet away from a family member.
I don't know that it was any safer back then. I don't know how bad it is right now in any specific area, including my own. What I do know that when it comes to my daughter (and her friends) there is no concept of 'acceptabl
So, maybe I'm reacting to overproduc
All that said, it is kinda sad. We had a lot of fun before the street lights came on...
-ek
When I was a kid it was "Go out and play. Dinner's at six."
I wasn't chauffeure
There are an endless number of ways to be a "Bad Mommy" these days, not the least of which is to allow your child some (gasp) independen
I consider myself a free-range person and am trying to curb my paranoia enough to raise a free-range daughter. Due to the bombardmen
Fear that arises from the gut is life-savin
And there are real monsters out there...ch
Sad to say, gone are the days of walking street to street and just collecting candy.
Now Mom or Dad..mostl
We make it a point to give out candy and have our Jack o lanterns lit up
Sometimes I even dress up myself....
Yes there are plenty of scary things out there...ma
Also, child abductions don't go up during Halloween. Do you know why? The *vast* majority of child abductions and sexual assaults are carried out by people the child knows; frequently a family member. On average, about 100 children per year are abducted by strangers in the US. That's out of 60 million children. In almost every single case of abduction by stranger, the victim has been isolated… away from crowds and video monitoring
Everyone is, of course, allowed to search their children's candy, go with them up to the door, stay on their heels while they're out… or even just tell them they *can't* go trick-or-t
So, sure… "disagree.
Parents generally do not need to go out with their kids on Halloween. My parents simply made sure that I went with a large group of friends. Not only did we never have any problems, but the independen
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When I relocated from New Jersey to Vermont, I was surprised to discover that folks here gave out baked goods. That was a huge "No-No" back home where we all worried about poisonings and razors.
It was a relief to put that obsession with fear behind me, and here's how we it now: http://thi