Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week, of course, what else could we talk about apart from Halloween? You know, over the years, this question has come up many, many times. How can we have a simple, meaningful Halloween? Yes, a little bit scary and edgy too, but how can we keep it from becoming just goofy, at least, and just downright overwhelming, at worst, for our children, particularly our younger children? So here are some hints and here are some things that I've picked up from parents over the years that have been good contributors, really, to having a Halloween that is genuinely fun for everyone.
One of the things to consider, one of the first things to consider is actually not Halloween, but the run-up to Halloween. One of the things that you might want to consider is having stronger than normal rituals and rhythms in your family life. In the couple of days or a week before Halloween, just get your bedtimes together, really focus on having good mealtimes.
Have a child launch out into Halloween and all that that means from an extra secure, safe base of family life. You know, be careful to just take a little more care to have lots of lovely chats at mealtimes, bedtimes that are just a little warmer and cozier, because Halloween, no matter how much we try and avoid it, almost inevitably will be scary for some children. And one of the ways in which to ensure the child is really not overwhelmed by that and freaked out by it, is to have that little bit of extra warmth and security.
It's preventative, really, rather than just waiting for Halloween itself. And just pay real attention to that. The other things that we notice around Halloween is that just about everything that a child sees and touches and experiences, they're trying to make meaning of it, particularly little ones, you know, two, three, four year olds.
It's a very sensual world for them. They're very sense-oriented. When they're particularly little, everything goes in their mouth, right? Somebody might be in that stage.
I sure remember that stage. They want to taste it, touch it, feel it. And Halloween can be particularly disturbing to children, young ones, because it is a sort of a sensory overwhelm.
And as such, it can create a lot of anxiety in children. And that sense of security and familiarity can just go right out the window. So, keep Halloween low-key.
Just try and dial the whole thing back. As we know, it's kind of gotten to be a merchandiser's paradise, where they can sell large quantities of really, you know, not great plastic, rubber, ghoulish stuff. And just, if we can keep it low-key, if they want to wear a costume, that's fine.
But keep the costume very simple. They don't have to have all that ghoulish stuff surrounding, you know, on their bodies and blood dripping and daggers and all this, you know, implants of dental, like, vampire, you know, replica mouthpieces and all that kind of stuff. It's basically just merchandisers wanting to sell that stuff to us.
And little children live so strongly in their imagination that they don't need it anyway. All they need is maybe just some cloth around their shoulders, perhaps a simple headgear. They see it as dress-ups.
They don't see it as ghoulish and images of death all around them. These little children have come into this world to celebrate life, to be here, to be in the world. And these really overblown images of vampires and skeletons, and it's going in the opposite.
That's not where they're going. They're coming into life, not going out of life. Let them be in life.
And so the costumes that they wear can just be very simple, very, very simple indeed. Another thing is to monitor our children really carefully. If we see them getting wound up in any way, move in quickly, just move in and just, I call this we direct, W-E, we direct.
Off we go. Let's all go. So you take the child and together, the two of you, we direct.
You we direct them. You take them to something, you know, if it's a particularly ghoulish, particularly horrible, dripping blood sort of stuff, or not even. If you see them starting to get wound up or withdraw, maybe start melting down for no particular reason, they can start screeching and running around and you're just thinking there's no reason for them doing this.
They're just hyper. They've been wound up on the whole experience. It's like a sensory overwhelm to them.
Then it's time to move them away and really seriously think about coming home or just going somewhere quiet and just telling them, and this is another little tip, is just take them off and just sit them down wherever you are, somewhere comfy, and have a story at the ready and tell them a story about grandma and grandpa and or their great grandma and great grandpa. Because after all, Halloween is around the time of all hollows, where many, many cultural traditions celebrate those that have come before us. So for me, Halloween, at least in my family, has always been an evening where we would remember back to those who have passed, but long past, you know, stories of grandparents, but great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and of things long ago in the past, and the celebration of their lives and what they did for us, you know, and how what they did still influences us today.
For me, that's much more, that's closer to what the real core of this is all about. And at the very least, if you're not making that the central part of your celebration, at least have that up your sleeve so that you can make it a small part of the celebration, or you can have it ready for if your child is melting down, just draw them aside. And one of the best ways to re-establish a child's sense of equilibrium is telling them a story.
But why not tell them a story of something that is, you know, in line with what the season is, what the festival actually is. Be careful of masks. Be very careful of masks for little children.
It can confuse and even terrify them. Avoid masks. Because for a young child, they live very much in the practical.
I know my dad is dad. I know my sister is sister. And my brother is not a dragon.
He is my brother. Now, as children get to five, six, seven, they can kind of get it that there is a person behind the mask. For any child much younger than four, it's really quite edgy.
And for a toddler, it's straight up terrifying. So despite what we might want to think about how much fun this is for us, you know, for an adult, we know we can separate. But if we look through the eyes of a young child, they are not separating nearly in the same way of the mask versus reality.
Little children don't easily separate that kind of symbolism from reality. That's the whole nature of childhood. If we just watch them playing, you see it right there.
You know, their play right through to the age of eight, nine, even sometimes even beyond, is full of imagination, is full of fantasy. It's just beautiful. So therefore, why do we think they can easily separate this ghoulish world of Halloween from reality? They will be able to kind of get there around seven, eight, nine, but only just.
And any child much younger than that, and particularly even younger still, is really going to be overwhelmed by that. Now to us adults, it all looks fun and we, you know, it all looks fine. But for a little child, it's just not okay.
It's just straight up not okay. Now trick-or-treating. What to do about trick-or-treating? Quite a number of people these days set up trick-or-treating ahead of time.
So they'll go knock on doors, but it's pre-planned. And it's a few friends' houses. The food is, the treat is reasonably healthy.
It's not so healthy as to be yucky, but it's not just, you know, crazy sugar-laden, caffeine-laden stuff. And there also can be not just food, but little gifts given. It's when my children were trick-or-treating when they were younger, we would have these pre-planned places.
And they'd often be just these simple little things made out of wool, a little doily for their dolly house to put their little dolly cups on. Well, that's what they turned them into at least. I'm not sure what they were meant to be, but that was one of the treats.
Treats don't have to be just sugar-laden food. A treat, when you think about a treat, it can be other things. It can be a golden-sprayed acorn with a little birthday candle in it, and with just a little toothpick set in some beeswax inside the shell or some putty or blue tack.
And when you light the candle, it's a boat on the water. And that was, by the way, that was one of the gifts that we would give out to neighborhood children. And we would tell them it's a boat, and we would show them an example of it when they would come, because often kids would come to our door we didn't know.
And the little children were always captivated by it. They didn't want a mini Mars bar when they saw that kind of thing. Because it's real.
So that's my hint there, is pre-planning where they're going to go, and also getting together with the other parents about the treat. And it doesn't have to be just candy. Now, also, you can plan other simple little get-togethers around Halloween or All Hallows, as it's known.
There can be, you can invite friends over and invite children over, and have a party, have games, have fun, because the neighborhood will be, you know, lots and lots of fun going on, of course, and kids at school will be talking about all they're going to do. But particularly younger children, all they know about is that this is fun, there's going to be something really, really fun. So that we are not killjoys in that sense, we can still have fun, for sure.
But we do it at a little party, and we come on over, and there doesn't have to be, you know, crazy, again, ghoulish stuff going on. It can be a get-together, there can be games, there can be all sorts of things happening, like usually happens at a party. I mean, can there be cobweb spray, and so on, if you particularly want that, of course, you know, but it has much more an element of calmness to it, and of genuine fun.
I don't mean we should over-control the kids in any way. In fact, quite the opposite. What I'm talking about is children getting together, and really having a good time.
And particularly younger children, again, not being overwhelmed. What to do also with candy, if it does come up, right, and the kids do go out, and they get all this candy. Some of the ways parents have handled that is a pick three, pick one, pick two, pick three, so they can pick three of those candies out, and they can have them over the next three days.
By the way, you might want to go through a great big bucket of candy and just take out the more toxic stuff. But that's not all to be consumed. It's okay, so we have our basket of candy, and you may have three of those.
By the way, a lot of dentists these days are doing a buy-back candy exchange for healthy stuff as well, which is kind of nice. So at Halloween itself, on that night, for children of all ages, right through nine, ten, eleven, twelve, respect bedtimes. Get the kids to bed at their normal time.
The celebrations, for the Southern Hemisphere, it's darker in that time anyway, and have the kids have a good degree of keeping their normal sleep rhythm. They've gotten really, you know, they've had a party, it's all fun and so on. But within reason, try to get the children into bed on time, and also have had their evening meal of healthy stuff, because if you're going to consume some stuff that's not, it's good to get some reasonably good food into them.
But stick to bedtimes, stick to normal rhythms as much as possible. And then after Halloween, so the bookend of before and after, in those days after Halloween, really step up the rhythms and the sense of security and safety, particularly for little children. Some of you might remember in the Simplicity Parenting book, I quote a parent who said on her calendar, she marks S days and C days, stimulating days and calming days.
And every week has to have a balance of calming days and stimulating days. So if there's a stimulating, arousing, busy day like Halloween, then a calming day afterwards, or two calming days afterwards, is also really a thing to think about. Now just finally, one of the things about Halloween that some parents have commented on that is also healthy and gives a sense of process, is that if a child is going to have a costume, then, and it's a simple costume, have them make it, have them construct it, have the week ahead of time, you know, stitching what it is that they want, if they want a cape, if they want a crown, if they want a sword.
One doesn't go out just to a store and buy a nasty plastic sword with blood dripping on it. They can make a sword out of wood or a shield or whatever it is they want to dress up as. And I think the emphasis here is dress up, it's not death and ghosts and so on.
Then it's very, very nice for them to actually make that so that they're invested in the celebration itself. It isn't just easy come, easy go. And then afterwards, the costume gets carefully folded, perhaps in some tissue paper.
It's a treasure really, isn't it? And it gets hung up in a special place, because maybe they'll use that again next year, or they'll alter it, or their little brother or sister can have it. Because then over the years, you start to develop a lovely little corner of a closet with some cardboard boxes full of dress up treasures that the children actually have made, so that you can go to those to supplement each year when there's some kind of dress up festival. So after Halloween, it isn't just dumping those things down.
In fact, if the children have made them, they won't want to do that anyway. They might want to play with them for the coming days. But after they're done, yeah, carefully pack them up and have that sense of specialness about their costumes and about what they've made.
Okay, well, happy but simple wishes for Halloween. Bye bye for now.
