Trick-or-Treating Away

Celebrating Halloween With Your Kids Away From Home

By
Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

Q: Dear April Masini,

This is the first year I'm letting my child and his friends go trick-or-treating for Halloween without my adult supervision. While I believe he is old enough and he has proved his maturity to me, I'm not sure I want him to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood. Out of safety, I think he will go to his friend's neighborhood instead, where I am friends with the child's family. But is it wrong to send him out of my range?

From,

Worried Woman 

A:

Dear Worried Woman,

If you are friends with the parents of the other children who's neighborhood your son will be in, and they are responsible parents in a safe neighborhood, you are not in the wrong.

It's true. People are transporting their children to neighborhoods to do their trick-or-treating where there are sidewalks and safe homes.

The reasons for this change are as follows:

-- Neighborhoods are more cyber-based than physically based. This is a change. People tend to know others who live in different cities, states and countries more than they know their next door neighbors. When a holiday like Halloween comes around, which is traditionally a neighborhood holiday, trick-or-treating often means knocking on strangers doors. Parents feel safer knowing their children are in neighborhoods that they deem "safe" and familiar. These neighborhoods may not be their own!

-- Friends are not next door neighbors any more. This is also a result of cyber-neighbors who live cities, states and countries away. Children IM their friends the way kids in the "olden days" used to stretch two dixie cups, connect with string, from one house to the house next door, to make sort of telephone device. When it comes to Halloween, kids want to trick-or-treat with their friends -- not necessarily their neighbors, so they tend to go to different neighborhoods where their friends live, where one of their group of friends live, or where parents designate they can all trick or treat together.

-- Halloween has become more of an adult event. Many parents with children take advantage of the holiday to have multi-generational parties and events. If parents are invited to Halloween parties at other parents' homes, they will take their minor children with them to those neighborhoods so the families can be together for Halloween. This means, transporting from one neighborhood, to another, in many cases.

April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.

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