The last year I went trick or treating, I was thirteen. If I’d been in a city like Belleville, Illinois, I might have been charged a $100 dollar fine or even given jail time if the police had caught me at it.
Belleville, like a growing handful of American cities, has an ordinance that imposes an age limit on trick or treating. Mark Eckert, mayor of the town of 35,000, let the push to ban high school aged trick or treating in 2008, arguing that he heard too many complaints from the elderly and single mothers that the felt intimated by the “six-foot tall kids” that would show up at the their homes on Halloween in costume.
“When I was a kid my father said to me, ‘You’re too damn big to be going trick-or-treating. You’re done,’” Eckhert told ABC News. “When that doesn’t happen, then that’s reason for the city governments to intervene.”
But is it? Isn’t teaching your teenager how to transition into adulthood gracefully, which includes learning when you’re too old to go out demanding free candy, a parent’s job? The question is, as a parent, how should you handle transitioning your tween out of the trick or treating habit? Eckert’s father’s methods seem rather harsh, and new rules tend to inspire new rebellion in teens. Rather than banning teens from trick or treating, consider organizing the teens in your neighborhood to escort younger kids on the candy rounds. That way, they get all the fun of going out in costume while still taking that necessary step towards adulthood.
