TKW Consulting

Halloween can scare little kids. Here's how to keep it fun.
by Susan Schoenberger

Andrew was a 3 1/2-year-old Winnie-the-Pooh when I took him trick-or-treating for the first time last Halloween. He was having a terrific time knocking on doors and filling his plastic pumpkin with candy. Then we happened upon a block where a street show was going on. A group of adults were pretending to be monsters playing in a band.

While I was chuckling at a Frankenstein Elvis, I felt my son grip my hand tighter. "I don't like this, Mommy," he said. What to me was just a bunch of adults dressed in goofy costumes was not at all benign to my preschooler. From his perspective these monsters weren't just unfamiliar—for all he knew, they were capable of harming him.

Halloween, much beloved for its dress-up parades and candy collecting, can also
manage to scare the wits out of many preschoolers. But you can help your child
cope with his fears if you understand them.

THE PERCEPTION OF EVIL
The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget found that children aged three to seven tend to react to things exactly as they appear. Piaget called it concreteness; this suggests that very young children believe a character is nice if it looks nice, and evil if it looks evil.

Most preschoolers also can be frightened by someone wearing a mask, even if they watch the mask being put on. "The fantasies evoked by Halloween characters can be very disturbing to young children," says Joanne Cantor, Ph.D., professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who has used Piaget's theories as a basis for her studies on the emotional effects that the media has on children. "A young child may not know that make-believe objects can't come and get you." By around age six or seven, however, children start to comprehend the difference between pretending and reality.

TAKING THE BITE OUT OF HALLOWEEN
Fortunately, parents can make Halloween less scary and more enjoyable for their preschool children. Here's how:

• Paint a nonthreatening picture of monsters, ghosts, and witches.
  "Describe such creatures as being exciting and intriguing, but relatively harmless to children," suggests Albert J. Solnit, M.D., professor emeritus of pediatrics and psychiatry at Yale. "The key is not to invest the monsters with powers that are beyond a child's control," Dr. Solnit says.


• Help preschoolers make their own costumes.
  This will help them see how make-believe is created, says Dr. Solnit. "If you purchase a costume from a store, stick with nonthreatening characters," he adds. "The emphasis at Halloween should be on play, rather than on shock value."


• Avoid blatantly scary activities.
  Skip the local fair's house of horrors, for instance, or don't watch the Halloween horror-movie-of-the-week. "Once your child has seen something frightening, it's extremely difficult to undo the effect," says Dr. Cantor. "You can explain and explain, but for a young child that vivid image may continue to haunt him."


• Help allay any fears that arise during Halloween.
  "If your child seems terrified by a mask," says Dr. Cantor, "let him examine it, put it on, and look in the mirror. This will help demonstrate that the person underneath doesn't change."


• Try not to get overly concerned by a child's fearful reaction.
  In most cases, experts agree, positive memories of Halloween—as an exciting time during which you can pop in on neighbors, dress up, eat piles of candy, and so on—make the longer-lasting impression.

I know that's been true for my son Andrew. Despite last year's mishap at the monster show, for months he's been saying he can't wait for Halloween.

// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 4:20 PM