To not put sweets out for trick or treaters but take DS?

[haveamooch]

I always take DS trick or treating with his cousins. However, it has occurred to me that I'm being quite cheeky by not leaving any sweets for anyone at my own house.

The reason I don't is because my DH doesn't like Halloween at all and refuses to participate in any way, but will tolerate me taking DS.

AIBU, given that my DH won't have sweets put out for other people, or should I just go against him completely and do it anyway? Not really sure I'd be happy to do that since it's his house too

And just to clarify, we only ever visit houses that are decorated for Halloween/clearly look open to trick or treating.

I don’t see the big deal.. when the kids are old enough not to trick or treat I’ll do sweets for the young ones. At the moment we take the kids. Before kids we were happy to give sweets too. I’m sure in the end it will be a lot more year of giving treats then taking them.

What age do kids stop doing it?

I felt a bit mean this year, we usually carve a pumpkin and give out sweets but I was at a work event and not home until late and DH was doing DSs bath bed time routine in his own from 5:30-6:30 so it would've been too difficult to keep going to the door, but we didn't take anything or go trick or treating, DS isn't even a year yet so doesn't have sweets.

Just had a man with small child trick or treating at our house. He knocked, we ignored. Then he rang the bell. We ignored again. Next door has masses of Halloween decs up. We have none. No pumpkin, nothing. To me, that's a big big hint, that we dont want trick or treaters. He stood there with his child for a full 5 mins, knocking and ringing the bell. Just cant understand why someone would do that. I have a disabled family member that gets distressed with this sort of thing.

That's so incredibly rude. You don't knock if the person clearly hasn't got clear hints of Halloween going on.

In saying that, we only ever knock at houses with decs up and loads didn't answer at all!

I assume you go trick or treating where your dcs' cousins live, so why not bring sweets to their house to hand out, so the same people who are giving your DC sweets will get sweets from you for their DC. That seems fair to me.

We live right near them, same neighbourhood

Round here i would leave a bowl out.

Many people did it last night and none of the bowls had been ransacked everyone just took one.

But then we live in a good area where most people join in so the kids know their buckets will be full to the brim by the time they get home.

We just take at the moment. I will hand out once the DC are older. Round here the general trend is if you have small kids you go trick or treating, if you have older kids you hand out. Very few people leave bowls out as they disappear too quickly.

*We always leave an empty bowl out with a 'Please Take One' sign and an empty sweet wrapper at the bottom.

Seems keeping with the season.*

That’s pretty mean, imagine all the small children who think they got there just too late.

I think it's fine. We live outside town so don't leave treats out as we get no-one calling. We head into town to go around with a group of friends. Many of the people we call on are older with no or grown up kids and obviously enjoy participating and seeing the kids in costume. We only call at decorated houses. There is no shortage of treats as children tend to go to different areas of town.

I left sweets out last night, after reading so many on here thought it would be cheeky not to.

The first visitors took the lot! I know as my husband arrived home 20 minutes after I left & asked me where all the sweets were. I looked back on the CCTV this morning to see a group of 4 girls empty the bowl into their bags.

There was around 30 sweets in there. I hope they get stomach ache!

I won’t be leaving any sweets next year.

We always leave an empty bowl out with a 'Please Take One' sign and an empty sweet wrapper at the bottom.

Seems keeping with the season.

Now that is simply anti-social.

We put a big bowl outside next to the pumpkin. Our area makes a massive deal of Halloween, I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, it’s like the USA.

That’s guising Blackbear19. They tell a joke or a story or do a dance. And they make a “Guy”- an effigy they take round with and say “penny for the Guy” and you give them money (towards cost/effort of making the Guy). It’s to do with Guy Fawkes Night. The Guy is supposed to be burned on a bonfire on bonfire night

No in Scotland guising is dressing up for Halloween and telling a joke etc to get your sweets. Not the same as penny for the guy.

Laguna

Interesting. We would do that for St Nicholas. Say a poem, sing a song etc and get something in return.

Good public speaking practice I suppose.🤷🏻‍♀️

No, yanbu. You are not home to answer the door and there are plenty of people (me) who give candy to trick/treaters but don’t take any kids out to get candy.

If I were you, I’d just have a bowl ready for when I got back home, and if no one comes, then there’s extra treats for you and your child/children.

I once put a huge cauldron of sweets by the front door next to a pumpkin. I don’t like people knocking because my dogs go mad! Anyway, the first two kids that arrived took the lot ( I have cctv) So sadly I don’t do it anymore

YANBU one of neighbours put out a bucket of sweets with please take one type message on it. They got home bucket was gone, looked on their CCTV and a group of teenagers took the lot!

What's bloody cheeky is the bunch of shitty little tossers that emptied £12 of Haribo and funsize chocolate bars plus the "tricks" iof plastic fingers and eyeballs into their bag as we were leaving our house to take my son and his friends Trick or treating with their dad thinking it was ok and not saying anything ..I had to nip back in to grab the Halloween buckets and saw what the little f***s had done but didn't say anything as kids about and they did it to every single house that left a bucket outside as we were two doors behind them with five disappointed kids between us (quite common in our area to leave buckets of sweets out and 99.9% of peo0le only take a bag each)
Little gits were wearing masks so I can't run over the identifying culprits on the school run this morning either!!! Grrr!!

Just read other people's posts with the same problem... wonder if we all live in the same area😂

On the other hand, I gave out sweets for years before I had a child ( the pumpkin thing is recent around here, people used to just knock anyway. In fact, we used to hand out fruit as well, dh used to make the kids take fruit and then they could choose sweets). So we ‘gave’ for years without any ‘taking’. And I know lots of other people without kids who also give - it’s not a transactional thing where you can only take equivalent to what you give. If you enjoy trick or treating just do it and don’t worry!

I covered the doorbell with an A4 piece of paper which said please take one and left a large bag with hundreds of sweets in it. I ignored the whole halloween process, looked outside the door at the end and the entire bag had gone. There were so many individually wrapped sweets and I would think that people came along and helped themselves to massive handfulls. Anyway, I don't partcularly care as it prevented anyone from ringing the bell and disturbing my ill child and my dog. There is nothing you can do if people nick the lot. I put those particular sweets out as I don't particularly like them so I am happy to be rid of them. It's shit when people spoil stuff for others, but part of life today.

I don't think it matters - for years I took the dcs around the houses - no one was home - now the kids are too old, I always do a pumpkin and hand out sweets, I love to see the kids coming to my house, I wish we had more but we live on a quiet street.

Take take take and never give.
Really pisses me off.
How do you think this works?

Get over yourselves pp, the op is committing a crime. I know it was yesterday but for next year I wouldn't sweat it. If you were single their wouldn't be anyone at home whilst you were out.

I was shocked this year at the bad manners of some of the kids who came round. There's always the odd greedy child who takes a handful of sweets instead of just one, but this year we had a couple of gangs of children all grabbing as much as they could. I had to physically stop one boy from shovelling up his fifth handful - his bucket was full to the brim!

They were verbally abusive to the other children walking round, too - never known that before.

I never went Trick or Treating as a child and I don’t have DC.
I have given out sweets for the last 10 years at least.

I never thought about it as a tit for tat arrangement.

The op is not being cheeky at all. There will be many years when her dc are too old for it and she can give sweets out then.