Every Halloween we set out a candy bowl for kids who walk past our house to grab a treat, because we are walking with our kids while they trick or treat.
We live near the bottom of a steep hill, and we have never gotten a large influx of trick or treaters. Well, other than the year a few vans drove through and brought in bus loads of kids with them. lol Regardless, our candy bowl has always been utilized as intended. Kids take a treat or two, and move along their merry way.
This year was different.
While I chased a group of kids one way, some of my older kids went a different direction. They encountered two boys with huge backpacks on. My daughter said that her friend knew them, and said they were “bad” kids at school. Not bad in a “doesn’t listen to the teacher” way. Bad in an actual harmful way. We didn’t know these kids.
The girls said these two boys were specifically asking for houses with unmanned candy bowls. They said they’d already gone down our road and hit a few. Our house was one. They took our entire bowl.
Then I realized why all of the other houses I’d taken my group to, that had bowls, were empty. These two kids were ransacking free candy bowls.
Now, are there bigger issues in the world than this? Of course. But it bothered me. On a night where people are giving out FREE candy, it’s still not enough. Someone has to go and ruin it by taking it all.
Usually our neighborhood has a good amount of participation in Halloween. This year was much different. None of the usual elderly people partook in it. None. They had their doors shut, lights off. The only houses who gave out candy had trick or treaters themselves.
I’ve been consistently against Trunk or Treating, but I’m seeing why they are more popular. As my kids get older, it feels like fellow parents are doing less and less actual monitoring of their children and then wondering why their kids won’t behave.
I’d say we need to work as a community to help shepard all the children together, but that isn’t possible. The parents of kids who are actually the bullies are the ones who see their kids as victims. I’ve seen this myself. The child who goes around hitting people, tells the parents they are getting hit. The child who says harmful, mean things about others, has a parent who says awful things about others while on speaker phone. The kid who leaves other kids out has parents who constantly say their kids is being left out. The moms who don’t watch their toddlers are the ones criticizing the moms who actually watch and know where their kids are as being “helicopter parents”. If you approach any of these parents about their child, they won’t listen, and instead will slander you, accuse you, and deflect the situation and nothing actually happens. Their kids go on terrorizing people, and the world keeps turning.
Perhaps it’s always been this way, and I’ve just never seen it. But something tells me what used to be uncommon is now common. I can’t be the only one irritated and noticing the lack of parenting going on. If your kid goes trick or treating and you have three back packs of candy in their room, you know that isn’t normal.
I’ve finally reached an age where I’m losing hope in the OLDER and YOUNGER generations. It’s a me, me, me culture. Negativity gets you farther than positivity. Being nice gets you called untrustworthy, but gossip makes you ‘good people’.
This is a backwards society. We live in the Upside Down. If anyone knows how to right side up us, let me know.
