Wikimedia Commons

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of trick-or-treating. Here’s how to make sure your kids remember Halloween as a happy time too!

I was a grade-schooler on a farm outside of a small town in the late 1960s, and back then Halloween was a wonderful holiday. We could run all over the town getting treats from every house, and we’d quite literally come back with the large paper shopping bags stuffed with goodies.

My favorite house was of the retired couple who’d owned the local grocery store; they gave out the most delicious caramel apples, hand-selected by the Mr. and lovingly dipped by the Mrs. That sounds quite risky to our modern sensibilities, but a tainted apple from the house of a community leader and icon was the last thing we really needed to worry about. It was far more likely that we’d suffer injuries from falling off porches or getting hit by cars, so that’s what our parents warned us about.

As it happens, times haven’t changed all that much — except I doubt people give out caramel apples any more! (A true pity.) The major threats your children face on Halloween are still the ones we faced, and yet parents worry about the things that almost never happen instead of the ones that actually do.

Kids and cars on Halloween are a dangerous mix, and every year large numbers of happy trick-or-treaters are sent to the hospital not because of drug-laced Gummi Bears, but because they were run over by automobiles. As it happens, Halloween holds the record for child pedestrian fatalities. Every year.

This is why I’m urging you to take some time out of your busy day (or evening) to listen to the Safety Solutions Podcast by my colleague Paul Carlson. In this episode he goes over some great tips to keep your child from being injured or killed while trick-or-treating.

I’ve always said that you should prepare for the most likely threats you face, and only after that should you concentrate on the least likely. This is a perfect application of that philosophy: how about spending some time this holiday to make sure that your child isn’t a victim of this very common threat?

This is important information for you and your family — don’t put it off!

-=[ Grant Cunningham ]=-