Parenting Paranoia on Halloween

The author quoted below makes a case that Halloween is the safest day of the year. She backs it up with research tested logic. Never the less, I remain paranoid. How about you? Do you send your children out unattended on Halloween? Do you check your child's candy before they eat it. I confess I did and I still would. Share your thoughts on this by clicking the comment link below or posting us a comment on our ParentingToolbox Facebook Group page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=153708258000364

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it's probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.

Take "stranger danger," the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight—those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either—kids could trip! Fall! Die!

And now comes the latest Halloween terror: Across the country, cities and states are passing waves of laws preventing registered sex offenders from leaving their homes—or sometimes even turning on their lights—on Halloween.

We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too. Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com

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Related articles

• Poisoned Halloween Candy: Trick, Treat or Myth? (livescience.com)
• Nobody Is Poisoning Halloween Candy (slog.thestranger.com)
• Lenore Skenazy: 'Stranger Danger' and the Decline of Halloween (online.wsj.com)

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