How to Hack Halloween for Foster, Adoptive, and/or Highly Sensitive Kids
Halloween offers the potential for great fun for kids and families but can also create some big challenges and needs, especially for foster and adoptive families, or families parenting highly sensitive children.
When making Halloween plans for your family, there are a couple of important things to consider:
1) Your Child’s Background and/or History Matters More than Their Chronological Age.
Considering your child’s background and history is an important part of planning for what Halloween may look like for your family. Even though you might feel that a child “should be” able to handle a certain level of exposure to Halloween based on their age, their background and history may require them to be treated with more sensitivity and censoring. Often, children coming into our homes from other places have been exposed to truly scary incidents and events, whether observed or directly experienced. In addition, due to cultural differences, some children may be experiencing Halloween for the very first time. These things will impact the amount of fun and joy your child can access and experience during Halloween and could potentially trigger a traumatic response within their bodies.
2) Know your Child’s Window of Tolerance
It is also important to consider your child’s window of tolerance when making plans. Quickly, window of tolerance is the range in which a child can feel and express typical emotions without dipping low into a bored/lethargic state or going up into an elevated, hyperactive or aggressive state. The goal should be for Halloween to be fun and successful for everyone, which may require sensitivity to the specific needs of your foster, adopted, or highly sensitive child. Halloween can absolutely be overstimulating to even the most regulated individual. It is noise-filled, overloaded with sugar, visually overstimulating, and contains a bit of fright. Having an idea of what your child can and can’t handle is an important part of creating a successful plan.
3) Expectations and Flexibility
With all things holiday and celebration related, especially with the foster and adoptive population, keep your expectations loose and be ready to pivot to a plan B at any point. This will help everyone enjoy themselves more.
Are you looking for some practical alternatives? Or other ways to celebrate the season with your family? Check out these suggestions:
1) Find small, low-key Trick or Treat options
Check your local library and community centers for low-key trick or treating opportunities. These are often during the day, no crowded, and less overstimulating. They are usually geared towards younger kids so often less scary!
2) Celebrate Halloween on a Different Day
This takes some coordination and planning, but, reach out to your family members and neighbors, and arrange for some trick or treating on a day close to Halloween. You can map out a few houses, based on what your kiddo can handle, and do some individualized, “boo-tique,” Trick or Treating.
3) Do a mini-home based Halloween experience
If traveling outside of the home isn’t a good fit for your kiddo right now, (sometimes attachment needs mean staying home is best for the time being), plan some room-to-room trick or treating within your home. Keep the crowd small but utilize a couple of close family members to man a room of the house and do some homebound trick or treating.
4) Titrate into Halloween:
Start small. Trick or treat just a couple of houses and then return home and watch a non-scary Halloween movie to start introducing the concepts of Halloween while avoiding the overwhelm and the scary! Add a little more to the plan next year based on your kiddo’s needs.
5) Plan an alternative Family Fun night
Skip the scary stuff and the candy all together and plan a family fun night on Halloween. Plan a low-key night, with things that help create a joyful experience for your family. If your goal is to truly avoid Halloween things, this will best be done at home. A movie night/game night could be a great option!