To think driving to roads where there's good trick or treating is a bit wrong

[sahknowme]

We live in an area that puts a lot of effort into trick or treating (assumingly for the "local" kids). There's recently been a thread on a forum asking for streets/routes that are good to drive to for their kids to trick or treat, and our street has been mentioned.

AIBU to think this is a bit wrong/grabby, and we are doing it for our local area - not for randoms to drive from all over town?!

My kids are going to their Dad's tonight so they can go trick or treating there. They are the only young children on my street, so no one bothers to do trick or treating here. There's very few people do it on the surrounding streets too. Their Dad's road had loads of families with young kids - lots of families decorate their houses and join in the fun. So it seems daft to me to force my kids to only go on my street, they'd be home in five minutes and it wouldn't be much fun!

They only knock on doors where there's a pumpkin in the window or the house has obviously been decorated and they're clearly taking part in it though. I would not allow them to go knocking on any random door and bother people who didn't want to do it. Am I cheeky in doing this?

I miss the guising bit of Halloween since moving to England. DS2 (who has only ever lived in England) wishes that it was done here rather than just trick or treating. He wants to tell bad jokes to the neighbours! And he does have a home made costume. He’s delighted by this.

When I was a kid people would make up little bags for guisers with a satsuma, nuts, a few coppers and a chocolate bar/sweets in them. Do people still do that? You’d end up with a carrier bag that was pretty much full of ‘monkey nuts’ from going round your street and the next one.

Yes people do still make up bags here but we had so many that we couldn't make up hundreds of bags so ended up just having a couple of bowls and giving one thing from each bowl - e.g. bar of chocolate and a lolly pop and just topping up the bowls all night.

Sometimes people made toffee apples and put them in the wee bags for guisers too. And they’d invite you in to dook for apples too.

In fact, everyone invited you in and chatted about your costume. Then you performed your party piece in their living room before they gave you a wee bag of stuff.

It would take over an hour to do a few houses on your on street.

Pfft, sparkewater my DS was walking 40 mins to school from the age of 4! (And back 40 minutes in the afternoon.) 30 mins is nothing, and it balances out all the massive amount of sugar they are just about to eat!

Arbitrary that sounds a lot nicer than going around 30 randoms houses for a 30 x a mini bag of haribo and no chat!

Anyway, I am going to put the pumpkin out and have a bowl of sweets on hand, even though we are in flats and I've only had kids knock on our door twice in fifteen years!

And I will try and make it a halloween-y meal tonight - hot dogs, maybe - to lessen DS's wistfulness at not ToTing any more.

Arbitrary People still do open houses or garages where people come in for dookin and doughnuts on string etc. A party piece is still expected regardless if it's in the house or on the doorstep. My party piece was usually "wee willie winky" :o

Yeah. I’m feeling all nostalgic about it.

The village I grew up in was awesome for Halloween. One of my primary teachers (who lived in the village) used to have a ‘double treats’ rule for people who sang rather than told a joke. We’d spend ages at school talking about what our party piece was each year.

Where we live now is good for truck it treating. The neighbours really go to town decorating their houses (some with little projected shows to music etc!). But it’s just not as good as guising was when I was a kid. We’re having a (short) Halloween party with party games here before DS2 and his friends go round the neighbouring streets.

ArcheryAnnie So do mine, on the way to school and home again. It's not pitch black then though, and we aren't walking along the main roads. But thanks for the fitness tips.

And am buggered if they'll be eating all the sugar in one go!

I suppose this is what illustrates the OPs point. We used to do more, make up bags, have kids in to put their hands in boxes filled with goo that was meant to be worms. brains etc Then we started to get too many so it was down to one thing from each bowl and jokes on the doorstep and now we go out to just to avoid it. So it's ruined it really.

I live in an area which has great trick or treating, like really, really great. An awful lot of houses decorate in a big way and dress up to give out treats. Some people set their front gardens out as spooky graveyards and some dress up and hide among lifesize figures so they can jump out and spook the trick or treaters. Some parents bake muffins for the parents, some houses give out drinks or set up games to play before giving out treats. And by treats I don't mean a lollypop or two, each house gives out big bags of sweets to each child, it's intense. It's just lovely, probably the best community night of the year.

But you know what. My son and our neighbours' children are intensely privileged to live here. On Halloween and every other day of the year. We live in a fun, close community full of people who want our neighbourhood to be fun and safe for our children. I know families who live in apartment buildings which are fine but with no community and others in apartment buildings where junkies dominate the stairwell, piss in the lifts and even shit in the hallways. Families who live in estates where walking about for three weeks either side of Halloween night will lead to crappy teens lobbing eggs at you. And I have to wonder why on earth anyone would be such an utter void of empathy and humanity to think that there is something wrong with the children from those buildings and estates driving or bussing 15 minutes away to enjoy under an hour of the privilege and good fortune my child gets to experience and benefit from every day of the year.

The world isn't fair and equal. It should be but it's not. So if you happen, by dint of mostly good luck, live somewhere that enjoys safety and child-centred community spirit, then suck it up and share your good fortune with the kids who will probably never get a fraction of the privilege your child has. It's just a few sweets to you but for the child it's a wonderful memory they'll carry for life.

sparkewater mine was frequently more interested on the night in the stamp-collecting aspect of the sweet haul (how many haribo, how many lollipops, how many Celebrations, any rare American sweets from the posh house, etc etc) than in necessarily eating it all. I may have helped him with the eating it all aspect when he tired of it all.

archery Oh, helping them eat it goes without saying!

Mine are more excited about dressing up than anything else I think! :)

I don't really get why anyone would care where the children come from as long as they are children who are dressing up and having fun! Where I live many children come from roads where trick or treating is not much good and I don't have a problem with it at all.

Not sure how I feel about this, here we guise no trick or treating. So my older kids went locally where my youngest went to school and to friends in our street only and my oldest went with a group of friends locally then over to the area where he went there To school as were at different schools.

Now we’ve had to move outside the school catchment so no where local accepts guisers and we never get any. I wouldn’t take my younger 2 sons out as I don’t know anyone well enough to do that. I could go to the village where they go to school but I’d feel quite cheeky tbh. When I explained my 7 yr old would need to say a joke etc he freaked and said he didn’t want to go anyway and had a tummy ache last year conveniently. Not sure if my youngest wants to go later, we shall see. Just think kids should have the opportunity just shame some areas just are a bit crap

Greentulips, I thought the question of the thread was about driving to roads outside of your local neighbourhood, as they had better Halloween stuff - according to someone else's recommendation on a public forum.

If you are driving to roads outside of your neighbourhood as recommended by some random on a public forum doesn't this mean that the children will be knocking on the doors of strangers?

We used to live very close to All Hallows when kids were little.
Trick or treating just paled into insignificance when we moved to a town.
It still had the old dunking equipment for witches.
Nobody bothers on our street, all the kids have grown up so no family community, it's great
Nobody has knocked for ages, it's bliss.
Yes, if you have dc and live in an area where it isn't accepted it makes sense to go where they do celebrate.

I live in a council house. Pumpkin on the doorstep, porch light on decs in the window and we barely get any even though there's several children who live local. We usually get the some of the very little ones early on but most choose to drive there kids to the "posh estates. I can't understand why. A lot of the house round here are decorated just as much if not more than the "posh" houses. Do people really think people in the nicer house buy all there sweets from Harrods? so they're going to taste much better than the ones from b&m? In fact I think the nicer areas are more likely to dish out healthy organic alternatives

Amd inspect your candy? This year, because it's a school night, we'll trick or treat for an hour, go to McDonald's for supper, and they'll have trick or treat sweets for pudding. I wouldn't dream of inspecting or stealing any of their sweets!

I live abroad and won't get any ToT - although I loved seeing all the kiddies when I was younger living in Ireland.

On a note - there is one or two gated communities that are noted for ToT here and I noticed today when I went to a play date that they had put up a big sign that on 'Halloween the compound will not open to the public', mainly because people had been dropping their kids off unattended and leaving them there for evening

If you don't want to give out sweets then just take your pumpkin inside surely? That's what we do when we run out and nearly everyone sticks to the 'if there's a pumpkin lantern you can knock' rule.

That rule doesn't seem to exist where I live! We've never put a pumpkin out and every year get a minimum of 6 or 7 groups of kids knocking. I had no idea driving them to a different area was even a thing, but to my mind it's much less annoying than knocking on doors of houses that have no visible signs that they are participating. If you drove your kids to any area where you didn't know anyone, then let them knock on doors with no pumpkins, that would just be rude.

I wouldn't dream of inspecting or stealing any of their sweets!

I don't steal DS's sweets, he offers me the ones he doesn't much like.... (And then I whine for Haribo and he very sweetly shares.)

Woah, this is a small scale argument for the whole worlds dilemas! Seriously. Personally, I have a problem with teaching our kids stranger danger then telling them to knock strangers doors for sweets! It's crazy. So I only take my kids to houses I know.