*Sigh*. Halloween. This is a hard one for
me. I guess I will admit that I am not terribly fond of this particular
Holiday. Don't get me wrong. As a kid, I loved dressing up and parading
myself to our neighbor's door, begging for candy. Trading most of it
back and forth with siblings after we returned home. Eating until you
had a tummy ache and couldn't fall asleep.
Seriously... the smell of the candy. Heaven.
But... I am not
not a fan of being scared. I guess it is in part to the fact that I suffer nightmares. Like, every night. What I watch deeply
influences my dreams, and while I'm sleeping, I have absolutely no idea
that I am, in fact, asleep. Even when my cute hubby and I go
to a movie, when you can sense that the scary part of the movie has
arrived, he has instinctively learned to tell me to cover my eyes. I
dislodge my face from his shoulder and resurface, when the movie is
finally deemed safe for scaredy-cat eyes.
But now, my
dislike for Halloween goes beyond me. Many of my children are not your average kids. I have children on the Autism
Spectrum, children with severe Anxiety, and I have children that have been traumatized and have seen things that NO little child
(some as young as preschool aged) should ever see.
These
fears go
WAY beyond being scared. I have had little
faces buried in my side MANY times, squeezing me so tight that I have a
hard time
walking, as we enter just about ANY store during the month of October,
because let's face it, stuff straight out of a horror film, is
EVERYWHERE.
This year I had a child that did not want to
go Trick-or-Treating. at. all. because he didn't want to look at, and
experience all the "scary stuff" in our neighborhood. The temptation of
"the loot" ultimately won out, and he ended up changing his mind and
going Trick-or-Treating with us, but he had his head down or buried in my side most of the way.
I'm
really not trying to be a poo pooer, thinking that no one should
celebrate Halloween. And yes, I know that we have the choice to just
stay home and boycott Halloween. I guess it's just the Mama Bear in me. I
just wish I could better help my terrified kiddos make it through this
particular turbulent holiday with some sort of childhood normalcy.
But
I guess I also wish that people could be a little more aware and
understanding too, maybe kicking it down a notch, KNOWING that there are
going to be lots of very small children out and about, experiencing
everything that is out around them.
Some of the stuff I
see out there could easily traumatize ANY small child, that DOESN'T have
any trauma attached to them. Is the goal really to scare the bejeebies
out of little kiddos? Isn't that is who is coming to your front door.
Too much to ask? Yes, I know. *End Rant*
