Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Rules of Trick-or-Treating

Our 4 year old Little Girl adopted 10 months ago from Ethiopia was hugely excited about her first Halloween yesterday.  Her big brothers and sister got to wear their costumes to school, so of course she insisted on putting on her costume at 7:30am along with her siblings.  Then when we sent them off to school, she looked at me expectantly and said, "Okay.  Let's go trick-or-treating!"  

At 8am!  She really did not understand at all why trick-or-treating could only happen at night!  Can you imagine if we'd gone and trick-or-treated at 8am, the looks the neighbors would give us?
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Just before it was finally time to go trick-or-treating we went over the rules.  You know, rules like:
  1. You must say thank you and it must be a loud thank you, if I don't hear you from where I'm standing at the street, it doesn't count!
  2. Stay together!
  3. No stepping off a curb into the street without Mommy or Daddy with you.
  4. No eating the candy until Mommy or Daddy have looked at it first!
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Yeah, we felt a little smug about our parenting, having so well prepped our children.

I knew something was up about 5 houses in when the man giving out candy started laughing at something Little Girl had said, but I was off the porch and couldn't hear what she'd said to make him laugh.  Then a couple houses later I heard her say as she looked in a candy bowl that was handed to her to pick from,  "Ewwww!  No, chocolate is too messy!  I don't want that!"

We didn't think to have the rule about not giving a commentary about the candy people were handing out!  

Needless to say we had to stop right there and set the clear expectation that, "You do not complain about the kind of candy.  You take whatever candy they give you and you say, 'Thank you'.  And later at home you may be able to trade with your brothers or sister for different candy."

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And everyone who had siblings growing up knows that the trading post Halloween trick-or-treating is the best part of the whole thing!   



That is only half of the candy the kids came home with, the boys emptied their buckets onto the table!

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Some of our neighbors go all out for Halloween, as in they build a haunted house in their driveway with a large wood frame covered with plastic sheeting.  Little Girl was the only one of our kids brave enough to go in it!  It was hilarious, my 5 year old son looked at his 4 year old sister as she got in line and said, "Tell me how it is!"

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Last, I have to admit to being the Halloween Scrooge this year.  Since we were giving out the organic, fair-trade chocolates, we only gave each trick-or-treater one piece!  In my defense, those Organic Milk Chocolates are not cheap and besides that stuff is good, I wanted some left-overs!  And I didn't have to actually feel stingy because my kids were all excited to pass out candy so they handled putting one into each child's bucket/bag.

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Now that all the Halloween confusion/excitement is over, I really need someone to come explain the "Fall Back" time change to my children.  I'm fully expecting to be woken up by kids at 6am instead of the typical 7am beginning Sunday morning and extending for the foreseeable future.  Clearly whoever invented Daylight Savings Time did not have young children.  Clearly!

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Happy Friday, Friends!

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9 comments:


  1. So fun.

    It ALMOST makes me miss the Halloweens when my kids were still home and trick-or-treating.

    Almost.

    I'll enjoy it vicariously through you.

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  2. What a wonderful time. We do not have Halloween here. Happy Friday.

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  3. I would imagine the trading could get hot and heavy. I will trade you two Kit Kats for Licorice. Are you nuts? Do you know the playground value of Kit Kats?

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  4. Halloween was a tricky concept for my newest to get. In the end, I think the anxiety of the unknown was just more than he could take and he ended up forgoing trick or treating :(

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  5. Cute pictures! Good rules! I was reading this thinking..."Doh! I totally forgot to tell the girls NOT to eat any candy until I looked at it!" Fortunately, they were so excited about running from door to door that they weren't thinking about eating the candy!!! LOVE the vibrancy of your new, sweet little girl! And for the record, I would have LOVED those fair trade chocolates!!!

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  6. It seems we had less kids this year, still have a lot of candy leftover, not good, I have eaten 3 snickers so far. Have a great weekend and for the record those that developed daylight savings had kids!

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  7. Oh, what fun! Even though we skipped out on Halloween this year, I remember how much fun it was for my boys (and for me when I "examined" their candy to make sure it was o.k. for them to eat).....I always ate some of their candy to test it!

    I love what Little Girl said.....kids! They say the stuff we want to say but don't!

    I want to try those organic chocolates now...

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  8. trading was one of my favorite things to do as a kid too... and I was the eldest so I always made the best trades... my second fave halloween memory was that watching the Santa Claus Parade on TV was the only time we could pig out on Halloween Candy... it was a fun combo tradition.

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  9. Love her comment...chocolate is too messy...Lol! Kids are so funny! It sounds like you had a night much like ours. :) Happy voting to you, today!

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