I'm pretty sure I left a topic about this years ago, but I feel I should bring it back. I have a little more to say on it, plus there are newbies here who may be interested in reading.
About eight years ago (holy shit, eight years ago already?! X_x; ) I was with my friends during Halloween. I was dressed as a demon black cat. Now, Halloween is my favorite holiday, and when I dress up as something, I'm not just dressed up and chilling out, munching on candy, and having usual chats with friends. I roleplay. I get into character. I make up a personality for that character, act and talk like them, and bring up topics that character might discuss.
My friends and I were all doing this. Walking around, discussing things like our characters would. And keep in mind that this is right before trick-or-treating started, and it was still light outside. In my demonic cat tone, I ranted about how lame Halloween is these days. How kids just dress up as princesses and Spiderman, and people are more concerned with candy and cuteness rather than the thrill of fear. Conveniently, a little girl and her parents walked by us as I was talking. This little girl was dressed as a witch (which is a nice change), and she wasn't terribly young. I'd say she was at least four or five years old. We passed them at the perfect time for me to turn to her in a roaring-monster pose and say, "we should be scaring the children!"
Immediately the mother screamed at me. The child was fine. She wasn't upset, she wasn't crying. In fact, she seemed surprised and a bit amused, but her mother was furious. I ignored it the best I could. I eventually got over it, went about our trick-or-treating. An hour or so later, we were waiting at a house where the woman showed up and noticed me in the dark. I heard her voice behind me.
"Don't you dare scare my child again!"
That ruined my night. It really did. I also feel bad for that poor kid whose parent is horribly paranoid and over-sheltering. And I was just a kid in terrible cat makeup who simply did a "roar" pose and said something in a somewhat raised voice. I can't imagine what she did to anyone who actually TRIED to scare her kid. Did she punch em? Sue em? Good lord.
Look, parents. If you're afraid of your kid getting scared and think they'll be scarred for life, don't take them trick-or-treating. When you go out, you should EXPECT that people have set up things to scare kids. It's not bad for kids to be scared! It's exciting. It's actually fun in a Halloween environment. It's all in good fun. No one is trying to hurt your kid, they are trying to give them a good, amusing scare. Let your kid have fun, but if you're so horribly against that and don't want your kid to experience natural emotions they need to know, don't ruin it for the rest of us who understand that Halloween is for having a good, creepy, sweet-filled time.
This video by the Nostalgia Critic awesomely explains how scaring kids isn't horrible. Though he's talking about movies specifically, it still makes plenty of sense in real life Halloween stuff.
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/41043-should-we-scare-the-shit-out-of-our-kidsHave any of you guys gone through similar experiences?
Topic: Scaring the children! (Read 343 times)