Editor’s Note: We’re digging into our archives for great articles you might have missed over the years. This article about Halloween with older children comes from 2017.

Last night was Halloween, and there were ghouls and fools aplenty. All our favorite shows were represented in various levels of costumed detail. Movies, too. Star Wars and superheroes, the staples of my own childhood, still remain firmly affixed upon those of my children. There were red balloons and orange buffoons, clowns from every angle.

The ratio of candy given to the amount received was squarely in their favor. My boys laughed. They had fun. They ate more sugar in one night than in the past six months combined. It was an evening of playful mischief and warmly lit wonder.

Man, I’m glad that’s over.

Except, and I’m not supposed to tell you this, it isn’t.

That may be because deadlines created by evil editors in eye shades are forcing me into actually writing this a week before, only pretending to have survived yet another Halloween. Or it may be because we live in a world so much scarier than anything the holiday can throw at us. Either way, we seem destined to live out the rest of our lives (or the next three years, whichever comes first) in a very special episode of American Gothic, but slightly more racist.

Maybe it’s both.

The thing is, I’m having a hard time getting into Halloween this year. There are several reasons, including, but not limited to the aforementioned fact that nothing make-believe can compare to the terror of our actual reality. Knowing that, it makes conversations about costumes and decorations feel mocking and hollow, the gallows humor of a Target aisle.

Also, I quit eating candy.

Additionally, the boys themselves seem less than excited about Halloween this year. As I typically fuel my enthusiasm from theirs, our home shows nothing to suggest the season but a couple of gourds rolling around our doorstep. The spiderwebs hung themselves.

For a while, I thought the boys may be apprehensive, seeing as each of them are in new, bigger schools than they were last year. Maybe they just needed some extra time to get a feel for how Halloween worked at the current level. I may have been too optimistic.

The oldest did have a costume idea that he seemed relatively interested in, where “interested” means he mentioned it once. He thought it would be fun to dress as Monty Python’s version of the Spanish Inquisition, which if you are familiar with the sketch, is quite funny. However, I had to point out that the context may be lost on some people, which would leave him as:

• a non-Catholic kid appropriating a different culture (the irony being that the Spanish Inquisition was established to deny others their respective culture through acts of great severity), and
• wearing religious stuff to a public school, which may or may not be against the rules, but certainly out of my comfort zone.

The youngest remains uncommitted.

I suppose my fear is that this is yet another milestone on the path out of childhood, the one where holidays, while still enjoyed, lose a bit of the magic that once made them monumental. They are no longer the pinnacle of a season, but rather Tuesday with a wig on it.

Factor in the heat (it’s over 100 degrees today), carry the one, allow for whatever, and you’ve got The Great Bupkis, Charlie Brown (rocks sold separately).

Honestly, I don’t know what will become of Halloween this year, if this is new for us or just a phase that we are going through. I’m pulling for the latter. I will do my best to keep the season, but at the end of the day, I just want my kids to have fun. We could all use a bit of that.

UPDATE: We did it. The boys picked out costumes on Monday after school while I went through the slim pickings of discount candy a couple of aisles over. The youngest chose a werewolf mask, the oldest a decorative light. One cut shirt and a jigsaw later I found myself sitting in a neighbor’s house with a group of other parents (and the frequent passerby) watching the Dodgers take it to Game 7 while the boys enjoyed the safety of mob mentality, a pack of sugar-bellied kids knocking and laughing and hopefully saying “thank you.” They were back by the bottom of the 8th, taking the corner and rounding for home.

Ready or not, here comes Halloween! By now, you’ve probably run across some of the hundreds of articles on the internet offering tips that guarantee a successful night of trick-or-treating for your kids.

But what about trick-or-treating success for parents? We got your back!

If your children are young, you’ll need to go trick-or-treating with them. Before leaving your house, set out an empty basket on your front porch. Make it look like it’s been tipped over. Add a sign that says, “Take one!” Kids (and more importantly their judging parents) will think you’ve already run out of candy and not that you’re too cheap to buy enough in the first place.

If you’re planning on wearing a costume while walking around with your kids, think it through. If you’re like me, Halloween is the only day of the year you even speak to half of your neighbors. Do you really want to have a conversation with them dressed as a clown or wearing a Trump wig?

In regard your kid’s costume, conventional wisdom says children should not wear masks that obscure their vision. I say, make sure your child’s costume has a full mask! With their impaired eyesight you’ll have no problem freely reaching into their candy basket for all the Krackel you can eat.

Also, while walking around your neighborhood, make sure you have a flashlight. Your neighbors will think you are being a responsible parent keeping your child safe, but you can actually use it to look for dropped candy along the sidewalks.

At the end of the night, every good parent needs to check their child’s candy before letting them eat any. I could not agree more with this tip. Don’t forget to “inspect” all the candy and remove anything that seems suspect (or contains gooey caramel and milk chocolate that you can further “investigate” after the kids are in bed).

Happy parenting and happy Halloween!

A version of this first appeared on Indy’s Child. Photo: ©famveldman / Adobe Stock.

Halloween season always reminds me of the time I dressed as Clifford the Big Red Dog. My children’s school needed an adult volunteer to wear the costume for a reading event. I decided to oblige in part because I like to laugh, and in part because my two young daughters liked the idea. In other words, they had not yet reached the Age of Embarrassment.

As children gathered in the gym, I started to suit up in a “secret” adjoining room. The costume was large and heavy, so a few parents helped me with the process. I remember being so amused by one of the instructions on the costume’s interior: “Always have another adult with you to avoid the danger of being overcome by a large group of children.” At first I thought, how ridiculous! But to be safe I made sure a couple of moms would help direct traffic.

That turned out to be a wise decision. For when I entered the gym, bedlam erupted.

Upon seeing Clifford, dozens of young children screamed, jumped up and down, and rushed up to me as I struggled to reach my seat. Those two moms quickly turned into Not-So-Secret Service agents guiding a celebrity by the elbows and urging the kids to clear a path.

Unfortunately, within minutes I was hot, claustrophobic, and disoriented even while sitting. Also, I could barely see the children who were at my feet, some of whom were murmuring “Is he real?” and plucking at my ankles. I tried to hide my socks but my big fluffy hands could not adjust my outfit. Mercifully, the event ended quickly, and the moms helped me escape the gym before Clifford passed out. But he (and I) learned to take future “swarming crowd” warnings seriously.

While my daughters approved my Clifford appearance, a few years later it was a different story (and costume). Before consulting with my daughters, I had agreed to don the costume of “Honey Bear,” who looked a lot like a certain bear who loves honey but for licensing reasons was called by a different name. When my youngest daughter, Lindsay, learned of this plan, she complained: “Aw Dad, why do you always have to be an animal? Why can’t you just be a regular dad?”

Her question reminded me of a family exchange one night at dinner when my oldest, Lauren, was getting increasingly embarrassed by some of my bad jokes.

“You are so Dad,” she said to me while shaking her head and half-smiling.

“Who do you want him to be?” my wife asked.

“Less Dad,” she replied.

Clever wordplay, I thought, but how do you achieve that costume? Granted, I knew what she meant, especially as the girls approached middle school age. As all parents learn, new phases of children’s development call for new parental costumes. As children grow older and more self-conscious, they often want “less Dad” (and “less Mom”). Especially when it comes to interactions with their peers.

Lindsay made this bittersweet lesson of parenting perfectly clear to me recently. While I would not be donning an actual costume, I was slated to be a chaperone on her middle school trip. When she found out about the plan, she said: “Dad, on the trip, you can’t do what you do.”

When I asked her what she meant, she acted out a series of my go-to quips, one-liners, mouth noises and gesticulations — all the props from my many “Dad” costumes that have built up over the years, you might say. I had to laugh, but then I realized that on the trip I had to be virtually “no Dad,” a kind of emotionless impostor of a father. Visions of the human duplicates from the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers flooded my mind.

I am happy to report that the trip went well. I managed to keep my usual antics to a minimum. In a costume change of Big-Red-Dog proportions, I was able to morph myself into a hollowed-out shell of a parent, which pleased my unembarrassed daughter immensely. I guess sometimes “less” Dad (or Mom) really is more.

With Halloween coming up this Saturday, we asked some of our City Dads Group members around the country to send us photos of their best family costumes from years past. Let’s just say, we have some pretty creative people among us.

Halloween family costumes: Rocky Balboa and Drago from “Rocky IV”

Halloween family costumes: “Family Guy”

Halloween family costumes: “Star Wars” 

Superman and Superboy

Halloween family costumes: “The Wizard of Oz” 

The “Despicable Me 2” cast

The “Toy Story” cast

And finally, we have three entries from the City Dads Group party king, Michael Moebes of our Atlanta Dads Group:

The “Harry Potter” cast of characters

The Von Trapp family from “The Sound of Music”

Halloween family costumes: “The whole Scooby-Doo gang” – Shaggy, Thelma, Daphne, Fred, a ghost and even the Mystery Machine.

Editor’s Note: You can find a few more dads and their families in costume on the NYC Dads Group site. Go check it out and send us some of your best family costume ideas for the scariest holiday of them all.

Ghosts and ghouls, beware! NYC Dads Group members and their offspring will be on the prowl for tricks-and-treats for Halloween this Saturday.

To celebrate, here are some of the family Halloween costumes from years past that our members and their children have worn. Enjoy!

Indiana Jones 

Jason Grant: “Jake is dressed as the last knight from ‘The Last Crusade.'”

The Incredible Hulk/Michael Jackson and Iron Man

Christopher Persley: “My daughter was The Incredible Hulk Jackson, a combination of her two favorites: Michael Jackson and the Hulk, of course. I was inventor, billionaire, playboy Tony Stark.”

Superman and Superboy

Larry Interrante, NYC Dads Group: “Last Halloween, Peter and I decided to be superheroes. He is wearing classic Superman and I am Superman from the movie, ‘Man of Steel.’ I think Peter is a super boy and, to him, I can do anything, so I am Superman.”

Editor’s Note: You can find a few more dads in Halloween costumes on the City Dads Group site.

After watching Despicable Me with the kids years ago and loving those little yellow guys wreaking havoc, it seemed only fitting that I refer to my own children as “my minions.”

We all know that getting everyone out to the car can be a pain so I took a lesson from Gru and now say “Minions! ASSEMBLE!” before we head out.  The kids love it with the only drawback being the occasional “Bee-do-bee-do-bee-do” siren the whole way out.

As a bald guy, Halloween costumes can be a challenge so I try to pick characters that are already bald like Dr. Evil, Voldemort, and in 2013, Gru. It also meant that with the right sweater and a well placed scarf, that my costume was good to go without going overboard, as I am known to do sometimes. No self respecting Gru would be caught without a minion so I needed to invent a costume for the kids. Here is how I made it:

Materials:

Glad 4 oz. plastic round mini cups
Hot glue gun
Cheap play glasses with the lenses pulled out (search for round wizard glasses)
2 inch black elastic
Velcro tape
Silver spray paint
Foam craft paper
Yellow hoodie or long sleeve shirt
Yellow beanie
Black pipe cleaners
Cardboard
Duct tape
Overalls
Black gloves

The Goggles:

1. Take the Glad Mini Cups and cut out the bottoms
2. Hot glue them to the glasses. To make the cups fit side by side, cut a notch in one of the cups at the top lip so they sit side by side.
3. If they don’t fit exactly to the glasses, hot glue the cups to a foam paper shaped like the front of the glasses with spaces cut out to see through the foam
4. Hot glue the cups together and let it dry. Once dry, you should be able to shake them without movement.
5. Spray paint the whole thing silver outside using newspaper underneath. I used two coats
6. Using the Velcro tape, place the felt (soft side up) to either side of the cups, securing with hot glue underneath
7. Measure the band length using your child. Have them put on the glasses to measure. This doesn’t need to be tight but as it is only covering up the glasses’ frame. Mark and cut the band.
8. Attach one side of the Velcro tape (grabby side) to the inside of the elastic band with hot glue. Once you have ensured that the band is the right size, do the same on the other side.

The Hat:

A version of this first appeared on DadNCharge.

Sure, I have had many memorable Halloweens before having our son Jake, mainly of the eggs and shaving cream kind. Things are quite different now. Last year, I remember putting on Jake’s scary spider costume and hoping he would last at least 30 minutes as I toted him around our building for trick-or-treating. It was not successful! We made it for about 20 minutes to about 10 or 12 doors before he crashed in my arms.

This year was more memorable for me and probably for Jake. This year, he was wide awake and on a sugar high from a cupcake we decided to feed him. Jake was in and out of his monkey costume on the warm, balmy and festive day. Actually, the monkey outfit was the toughest decision I had to make on Halloween. It was a toss-up between the monkey & a lion costume. I preferred the way Jake looked in his lion outfit. However, the hair on the mane of the costume kept irritating his face and it was a losing battle. What really prompted the decision was this – If you want your young toddler to wear a costume for an extended period of time, do you go with the cooler & uncomfortable costume that will make the parents have a challenging time…or do you go with the more comfortable and practical costume? Monkey won hands down.

Our son had the opportunity to interact and socialize with many of his friends. We took a stroll on the street so he could check out other kids in their costumes. Then, we capped off the enjoyable day with some trick-or-treating in our building. Jake was a trooper as we traipsed around, knocking on doors, and selecting candy that mom & dad prefer. Fortunately, even though it was daylight savings, our son was so knocked out from all of the stimulation throughout the day, he slept a bit later the next morning!

Overall, it was a memorable Halloween. Looking forward to next year…

This week’s “guest blog” post is from group member Armando, a soccer aficionado, coach, & extraordinaire as well as proud papa to Emilia (pictured on the upper left holding the pumpkin)…

Today I took my daughter Emilia to another great gathering with the dads group. The horrific weather was just totally the opposite to what we all enjoyed this afternoon, it was another great meetup. The indoor playroom was clean and spacious for everybody there, with a good collection of books and toys for the kids. The highlight was that there was a small table with some kind of magnets so that when you put them underneath the table you could move a frog, boat, or a lizard so the objects were moving all around on the table. The kids were amazed with this “magic”… How is daddy doing that? I think the space was good and worked pretty well for all of us. It has a changing table for those dirty diapers, some furniture for the dads relax on, big & bright windows, and most importantly, felt safe.

Emilia had a great time and I can tell you this because she just did not want to stop playing with the toys and the other children there. In fact, she even forgot that she needed to eat lunch. I was laughing aloud when I saw Emilia pointing to another baby (Colby’s son Theo) with a cute blue 3-eyed monster costume (kind of a cookie monster look) and she started to say “Elmo!, Elmo!, Elmo!” All the kids were wearing a costume and that was extremely amusing, and made for an entertaining event. There was a monkey, a little Godzilla, a dog, a little tiger , a chick, a Halloween pumpkin, a princess, a monster, a dinosaur, and even a little Captain America hero was there in case of an “emergency.” Emilia and I enjoyed the time running around & playing with the other kids.

All of the dads were kind of chilling out & having a good time…without missing the chance to take a lot of pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes. We had pizza, soda, snacks and John brought us plenty of delicious homemade cupcakes. Personally, I had to cut off a little bit with the food since I’m just a few days away from running my first marathon here in NYC.

Good stuff with Patrick and his “amigo” costume including a hat and a kind of “sarape” (like a nice blanket), moustache, and sun glasses…very funny! Again, it was a special afternoon with all of the kids during our Halloween extravaganza party, something that I don’t think I would see celebrating with my friends if I was living in Mexico (I know we call it Dia de Muertos, but we also celebrate Halloween in Mexico as well). This Stay at Home Dads group is very special!