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Halloween Safety: Track your kids while they trick or treat

By Megan Roth

It’s that time of year again – stores everywhere are stocked with aisles and aisles of miniature-sized candies, sales at custom stores skyrocket, and pumpkins (real and fake) adorn both stores and homes alike. Yes, folks – Halloween is upon us. Prepare yourself for the gleeful shouts of goblins, ghouls, and witches (need I mention children?).

But what happens when those shouts aren’t so gleeful. What are some of the risks annual Halloween festivities can carry?

First and foremost, everyone knows the dangers of allowing children to go trick-or-treating after dark. There are a couple of factors to consider here. Fortunately, it hasn’t been that long since I last went trick-or-treating (years, yes – but I’m still young!); unfortunately, however, circumstances have definitely changed. When I went trick-or-treating, my parents let me free to terrorize the town with my friends. Much as they would’ve liked to have chaperoned, I certainly wasn’t having my totally uncool parents tagging along. So they let me go, assuming that I was safe since there were all sorts of other trick-or-treaters around.

Here’s the thing: my parents always made certain I stuck with my group of friends; I was, under no circumstances, to split off and go to a house on my own (which was tempting, considering my friends sometimes moved at the speed of catepillars and there were tons of houses to hit up!).

My parents believed in the trusty old ‘buddy system’ and also in carrying a whistle. Thankfully, they weren’t so uncool that they made me carry it around my neck (duh – that totally would’ve ruined my costume!), but they made sure to put it in my pumpkin-shaped bucket before I left. I considered the whistle inconvenient and uncool at the time, but I now commend them for sticking with it. Thankfully, I never had to use it, but what if…

Another incredibly inconvenient, embarrassing rule that my parents enforced was that, under no circumstances, was I to go outside of the territory they’d mapped out (yes, literally!). Now, I’m from a small town, so my territory was rather large (in fact, I don’t think I ever completely covered it) but I was still strictly forbidden to go past certain streets for a number of reasons. 1) This ensured that I wouldn’t get lost. 2) I was never too far from home if I happened to need anything. 3) In case there was an emergency, they would know the potential neighborhoods I was in and could track me down much quicker than if I were given free reign to roam the entire town (this was before cell phones were affordable to the general population).

And even though they’d already confined where I was able to go and whom with, my parents still felt it necessary to set a curfew. Regardless of how far I’d gotten into my territory, I had to be back by a 8 pm every year. Now, I agree – that’s early! But it’s long enough considering our trick-or-treating festivities began at 6:00 and having that curfew didn’t mean the night was over.

When my sisters and I arrived home at 8:00, we would pile into the car with my dad, who would drive us to the neighborhood of our choice which was excluded from the map (every year we chose Mulberry Street – that’s where the money – and king size candy – was!) He would take us door-to-door until 9:00, which was the official end to trick-or-treating in our town.

Now, I didn’t realize this at the time, but I think our annual tradition of going to a different neighborhood together was about more than just safety. Granted, it was a way to keep us kids from straying too far by ourselves, but it was also an excuse for my dad to spend an hour of quality time with us on that oh-so-festive holiday each year. Safe, sentimental, and smart – who would’ve thought it…

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Megan Roth

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on October 28, 2008 (boomark / email).