The Tricks to Treating

The Tricks to Treating

This post is not meant to diagnose, treat, or save you from mental illness, if you or someone you love is in danger, please get help. You can text HOME to 741741 to be connected with a crisis counselor. I personally have.

http://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts

When you go or tick or treating you learn a lot of skills for life. I am currntly learning to type with ny daughters witches hand (fakke plastc witch fingerrs).

Pause…she let me take a break so I can go back to typing legibly. I will leave that top part unedited as a life lesson: I can’t always have things in a perfect layout. Being an English major with OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder) can have it’s challenges.

I am also learning to blog today with a child over my shoulder. She is learning how to read so this is a hard thing to do: To type words that I know are appropriate for my first grader to read. I just explained what a blog is: “like a journal or a diary”.

……pause for “kid stuff”.>>>>>> I got her all set up on her own chrome book, so that she can feel like she is “working like Mommy.” Man does the editor in me want to stop and fix the top part of this blog post. I finally figured out how to add images to my posts! Huge win for Mom!<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Okay,. so on to what you learn by trick or treating:

As a kid you learn how to say please: “trick or treat” and thank you: “Happy Halloween”. Kids learn what they can and cannot do at other peoples house. For example, some adults let children pick from the bowl, while some adults place each piece in the bag for them (making it a surprise for when they return home). Some houses allow you to just take candy from a bowl with no one there and the child has to learn to just take one piece and keep going. It’s amazing to me to see the little ones learn this for the first time.

This year was the first year that passing out candy was my responsibility and boy did I learn a lot. I definitely learned:

1. If you give special treatment to one kid in line, the kids behind them might want special treatment too. Like if you personally know one child in a line and don’t know the rest (we get a LOT of trick or treating traffic on our street if the weather is nice [I live in the Midwest] ).
2. Try your very best to have the child say “Trick or Treat”, but remember that some kids are non-verbal from either Autism, age, shyness, or other mental ailments.
3. Take deep breaths in between when each child comes, so you have enough excitement for each kid.
4. If you don’t know a character, ask and/or comment on their make up or costume anyway, maybe even their bag of choice.
5. Keep one extra bag of candy in the house JUST in case.
6. Stop and put up a sign when you are out of candy and turn all your light and Halloween décor (decorations) off.
7. It is just as exhausting as walking around trick or treating. When you are expressing happy emotion after happy emotion over, and over, for over 100 kids, you can only do it for so long before you have to take a break mentally or physically.
8. Don’t let the kids see you smoking or drinking, as this will propaganda them and make them believe these behaviors are acceptable.
9. Get SUPER excited for any teenagers you see and hype them up with how cool and hip you are: “slay girl, what? no way, yes! oh boy yea! yes omg. good job!” (This is different than the “awe. omg so cute!” That you give the little kids). However to be current you shouldn’t use words like “boy” or “girl”; this might give them a complex. Instead, use words like “you” or “it” looks so good when talking about their costume
10. HAVE FUN!!! This should be number ONE. However, it gets lost in all the overthinking about all of the judgements that are going to come up. Next year, remember this like in reverse. Read it twice so you can remember it, and even take notes. Because it goes fast and it is over before you know it.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

-A Manic Monday