WATCH: How to help kids deal with a COVID-19 Halloween
Published October 27, 2020 at 10:30 am
Full disclosure: I do not have children and I’m hardly an expert on them.
Having said that, I was a child at one point and I have nieces and a nephew, who, like me at their ages (under 6), loved Halloween. I didn’t care much for the dressing up in costumes, and I really hate it now, but the combination of candy, fall weather, scary movies, and television networks and streaming services tailoring their programming to the season is second-to-none.
(Christmas people, don’t even @ me. I’ll put the original Halloween movie or Hocus Pocus up against any tinsel trash you want to throw — unless, of course, it’s Black Christmas. Then maybe we can talk.)
But, of course, we’re in the midst of a deadly pandemic.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said he would prefer that parents not take their children trick or treating this Halloween as the province struggles to keep its COVID-19 case numbers under control.
While Canada’s top doctor, Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tram, has made it clear that there’s no need to outright cancel Halloween, provided people obey their local by-laws and practice social distancing while wearing cloth masks — made easier by it being Halloween and all. But it doesn’t change the fact that my nieces’ and nephew’s favourite holiday, like everything else this year, will feel a lot different.
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Sure, the kids will get over it. They are incredibly resilient, after all. But just because Halloween in 2020 will likely take a distant back seat to that time they walked in on you in the shower during their future therapy sessions, it doesn’t mean parents should just dismiss it as another casualty of COVID-19.
“I agree. Kids are incredibly resilient and resourceful. But also, they’ve been very much an afterthought during the pandemic,” says Pauline O’Brien, who is a registered psychotherapist in Hamilton and founder of The Compassion Project. “And kids are the ones that really have been impacted.”
While many parents have tried to play down the pandemic as not to scare or worry their child, Pauline says transparency might be the best route when communicating with kids, particularly school-aged children.
“They know that there’s something going on and it’s not normal. I think that if we don’t acknowledge that, it just creates more anxiety because people always fear what they don’t know.”
A quick Google search will take you to all sorts of variations to traditional trick or treating, like placing candy in bags and handing them out from the end of a hockey stick, but many parents will understandably refrain from allowing their children to trick or treat altogether. Those parents have an opportunity to get creative.
“For my kids, [Halloween] is definitely more exciting than Christmas,” continued Pauline.
“I was talking with my oldest and she was asking, instead of going out for Halloween, can we hide the candy, like it’s Easter? So I thought, oh, that might be a good idea, you know, doing something that’s a little bit different and acknowledging that it’s going to be different and explaining why.”
Pauline says that parents should provide space and support for disappointment, as well.
“Say, ‘yeah it sucks’, but then also be able to model some excitement yourself by saying, ‘let’s do something different this year’ and involve them. Kids are definitely more creative than adults so if they can come up with something that’s reasonable to do then you can get excited about it together.”
If you are participating in Halloween this year, the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued the following recommendations:
- Avoid direct contact with trick-or-treaters
- Give out treats outdoors, if possible
- Set up a station with individually bagged treats for kids to take
- Wash hands before handling treats
- Wear a mask
The CDC also recommends that you “bring hand sanitizer with you and use it after touching objects or other people” and “wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds when you get home and before you eat any treats”
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