Klara never trick-or-treated. We always go but she’s too shy to actually come up to anybody and say “trick-or-treat”. It’s a heavy burden to be shy and end up excluded from things by that unfortunate trait. I know that only too well.
Finally, today,* in year 7 of attempted trick-or-treating, I found a way to get her over the hump and into the land of successful, enjoyable trick-or-treating.
She told me this morning that she probably won’t trick-or-treat because she’s feeling shy. In response, I whipped out a 5-pound bag of candy and dropped it in front of her.
“Here,” I said. “This is all for you. You don’t need to trick-or-treat. This is enough candy to last you two years. You can go ahead and be shy. It’s a wonderful quality which gets you all this great candy.”
This removed the pressure, and she trick-or-treated up a storm.
“This is not a great house,” she’d say pensively. “They gave me a handful of candy but paid no attention to me. The house across the street, on the other hand, gave me a lot of nice attention.”
It took me years but I found a working method.
* We trick-or-treated on the 30th because my town is weird.
Clarissa's Blog 
We’re doing it this evening– my kids have never been! Before, we always lived so far out in the sticks that it just wasn’t a thing. The other parents would take their kids to the mall or whatever, to trick-or-treat, and we are lazy parents and cannot be bothered (Ok, actually, dad was working evenings and the mall is a no-go migraine zone for me). They had only a vague notion of halloween anyway, so it was no big deal.
But this year, their friends have been filling them in on what they’ve missed, and they have secured costumes and permission to trick-or-treat at the houses of neighbors that we know (it’s still a sketchy neighborhood, but they have a lot of friends), and they are really excited about it. It’s been a long time since I had the uninterrupted headspace to make anything cool, so when it turned out that even the preschooler will refrain from needing me every 3 minutes, if I’m working on his costume… he now has a sweet costume. He wanted to be an “eyeball guy” (i.e. minion from the Despicable Me movie). We had a vacuum-cleaner box, and found a bunch of scrap yellow and blue fabric at the thrift store for a couple bucks. Add posterboard, felt, and like half a pound of hot glue, and voila! Eyeball guy! Not bad for $8 worth of materials 🙂
We even sewed three-fingered gloves out of black felt, at his insistence.
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When you say “we always go”, who’s we? Has she ever gone with friends?
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We’ve gone with friends, without friends. That never changed anything.
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We just went to the five houses on our street where we knew the people who lived there. Half of them are old, and they hardly ever get trick or treaters because the neighborhood is sketchy. Hard to say who was more delighted: the elderly neighbors, or my kids who’ve never done it before and feel like they won the candy lottery. 🙂
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That’s so great! I’m really happy for you.
Here it suddenly became freezing temperature, and I’m very glad my kid hates the Halloween parade because I wouldn’t want to be out tonight.
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It was unseasonably cold and windy here– but when it’s only five houses and little guy is basically windproof in his box… no big deal 🙂
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It was unseasonably cold and windy here– but when it’s only five houses and little guy is basically windproof in his box… no big deal 🙂
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no idea why that posted twice
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That is such a delightful story! And what a fantastic thing to do for your daughter. I wish my family hadnt made me feel shame about shyness. I have one kid out of three who is a little shy, but nothing like I was. And one super-outgoing 8-year-old who enjoys doing things like giving presentations in front of a class, chatting with random strangers, greeting the neighbors, asking store clercs for help…all things I think are what I would have to do in Hell.
We had a cooler Halloween but that’s par for the course in New England. Better than last year when it rained.
What did Klara trick-or-treating as? My 8-year-old was a haunted ringleader. She’s getting into the scary costumes after years of princesses.
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She was a white cat. She loves cats. I’d love for Santa to bring her a live kitten but N isn’t on board yet.
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And in what concerns shyness, I discovered that saying “don’t be shy” doesn’t work. “It’s ok to be shy, this is a good, lovely quality” works much better. I didn’t know this, so now I’m spreading the news. 🙂
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