How teens should trick or treat?
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How teens should trick or treat?
| Sat, 10-20-2007 - 5:53am |
On Halloween, do you let your teen dds go trick or treating with a group of friends--or do you tale behind them.

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Well, since you no longer live nearby, I don't think it's inappropriate to have someone "tail" them to *be* nearby in case they need anything, assistance included. When my dd17 was still into trick or treating, I let her go alone with a group of friends in my neighborhood. I feel safe with my neighborhood, know many of the people here personally, and there are a *lot* of parents to keep an eye on them even when I can't personally see them myself. No matter where they went in the neighborhood, there was always a house nearby where we knew somebody, so they could go to that house if they needed to.
I think anytime girls are wandering around at night is a cause for concern. I'm actually less concerned about it on Halloween because I know there are a ton of parents out on the streets as well and a lot of "open doors" such as yours used to be. I'm a big believer in going with your gut instincts and if you feel like the safe thing to do is have someone nearby, such as your babysitter, then by all means, do it! It sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Thanks for your advice.
A related question would be "how old is too old"? My daughter's last year to trick or treat was age 12. My son seems to think he's going this year (he's 16). I told him that I think that's a bad idea, and that I sure as heck don't give candy to kids that old who show up at my door, but there's always a few who do. Is this another kind of "town by town" thing? (I remember being surprised when I moved here. The town where I grew up is only a couple hours away, but we always did our trick or treating AFTER dinner -starting around 6:30 or so. Here the kids start RIGHT after school - and it's pretty much all over by dinner (except for the teens, so I just lock my door and turn out the lights).
We all love Halloween, but ds15 stopped trick or treating at 11. That seems to be the cutoff here, which I prefer as I really don't like teens coming to my door anyway. I feel it's for the little ones. When I was growing up, once we got to about 12, we had parties, not trick or treating. We did go out on a scavenger hunt, which was a blast, but not the door to door stuff for candy.
Sue
My DD has announced (at age 17) this will be her last year of trick-or-treating with her friends. There are about 5 girls maintaining this tradition
Maybe it's a regional thing, but here, teens actually trick or treating is frowned upon.
Last year, I let my two middle boys, ages 13 and 10 at the time, go trick-or-treating in our subdivision together.
> > in our community is heralded at 6 p.m. with the sounding of the civil defense siren and ended at 8 p.m. the same way. < <
What a great idea!
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