Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
From the Files: A Halloween Crisis
Halloween in a school is always an adventure. The best advice for school personnel on this day was shared with me by a senior teacher early in my career: "Stay more sugared up than the kids." Whether or not the school has particular activities or parties planned, there's a certain level of craziness that infects most kids the day of the biggest candy fest of the year.
Several Halloweens ago, I was dressed as Greg from the Wiggles
for Halloween. For those of you unfamiliar, the Wiggles are an Australian children's music and television group. They dress in black slacks and solid colored shirts. Greg used to be the yellow one, before he got sick. My infant son was Jeff (purple) and my husband was Anthony (red). My daughter wisely refused to have any part in this.I arrived at the office at school that morning to find a witch and a mad scientist already hard at work answering phones and assisting kids. The day proceeded as Halloweens usually do, with a smattering more behavior issues than usual and a lot of cute costumes. Around lunch time, a bleeding tree frog entered the office.
The frog had had a collision with a pole on the playground and was sporting a cut on his forehead. There were no signs of a concussion, but he was bleeding pretty heavily. Greg the Wiggle took a look and immediately realized that the frog was going to need to be seen by a doctor -- the cut was pretty deep, and stitches looked like they were in the tree frog's future. The witch got out the emergency cards and started calling his mom.
With the mad scientist assisting, Greg donned gloves and cleaned the frog up. He was scared. He was only a third or fourth grade tree frog, and he'd never had stitches before. There was a lot of blood, and it hurt. Greg spoke calmly to the frog, explaining that the stitches would be quick, and that nowadays they sometimes even use glue to seal up cuts like this. Head wounds bleed a lot, she said, but it really wasn't that bad. The mad scientist held supplies and handed them over as Greg applied a butterfly bandage to the frog's forehead, pulling the edges of the cut together and stopping the bleeding.
Mom arrived and transported the frog to the emergency room, and the office returned to normal, or at least as normal as things can be in a school office staffed by Greg from the Wiggles, a witch and a mad scientist. We had our annual Halloween parade around the neighborhood, with 450+ kids trailing behind Greg in their costumes, scaring the neighbors. I called mom's cell phone that afternoon and learned they were still waiting in the ER, no news.
Around four o'clock, as I was finishing up for the day, the phone rang. It was tree frog's mom. She said, "He wants to talk to you. We're in the car on the way home."
Tree frog got on the phone and exclaimed, "Nothing!" I didn't know what he meant. "No stitches, no glue, nothing! The doctor said whoever put on that butterfly bandage did such a good job he wasn't going to touch it. So I want to know. What's your favorite candy?"
"Why do you need to know my favorite candy?" I asked
"'Cause I'm going trick or treating tonight and I'm gonna get a bunch of candy and I'm getting you some!" he replied.
The next morning, one of my students, sporting a big band-aid on his head, greeted me with a bag full of mini-snickers and a big smile. It may have been my best experience as an administrator ever, the Wiggles notwithstanding.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
What Should Really Scare Us This Halloween?
About 94% of kids will be out trick or treating tonight. Most of them, particularly the little ones, will be with a parent or other adult. Most of them will be told not to eat their candy until they get home, where an adult will look it over or at least tell them not to eat anything that looks suspicious. We, as a society, believe Halloween to be fun but also risky, and we take numerous precautions to avoid those risks.
But what are those risks? Let's start with the treats. 40 years ago, it wasn't uncommon for people to make popcorn balls or give out apples on Halloween. Over time, we came to understand that eating unwrapped food was dangerous, because the distributor might lace it with poison, put a needle or a razor blade in it, or otherwise try to hurt the kids coming by for treats. Now, I know of no one who would let their child eat an apple from their treat bag. So what do you imagine is the average number of treat tampering cases per year in this country? Is it more or less than it used to be? How often does someone tamper with candy and then distribute it on Halloween?
Never. According to research, there has never, ever been a case of someone poisoning or lacing or putting something in the treats they give out to children. There have been cases of poisoned candy, to be sure, but they have mostly turned out to be an adult's attempt to harm a specific child and blame it on a stranger. Back in the '70s, there were some highly publicized cases. One turned out to be a parent poisoning his own child for life insurance money, and another that was blamed on heroine in candy was actually a child getting a hold of a relative's stash. The candy kids get from the neighbors is safe.
The next thing we think we know about risks on Halloween is that you should go with an adult. Strangers are dangerous, and if you shouldn't talk to strangers then you shouldn't talk to strangers, period. What might surprise you, however, is that there is no increase in sex crimes against children on Halloween, either. All sorts of law enforcement efforts go into making sure that registered sex offenders don't answer their doorbells for the little ghosts and goblins, but it really doesn't make a difference. Children are at risk from predators every day, and Halloween is no exception, but it is not the bonanza for pedophiles we think it is.
So what really is the biggest risk to kids on Halloween? What makes it more risky than the day before or the day after for our kids? You probably can figure it out if you think about it. Halloween is the one time all year when children are walking around in the dark. The number of children who are killed being hit by a car on Halloween is more than double the number for any typical night, simply because there are more children out there. In fact, if you account for the massive increase of children walking outside between 4 and 10 PM on Halloween night, the rate of childhood pedestrian death per pedestrian may actually be lower. Oh, and when I say "doubled," it goes from one child per night to 2.2 on Halloween -- in the whole country.
Despite all of this, we all pay a lot of attention to safety on Halloween. I think that has nothing whatsoever to do with the odds of something happening to our kids. It has to do with our image of ourselves as protectors of them. We see ourselves as being able to keep our children safe, and we are pretty good at that. On Halloween, we afford them a teeny bit of independence. We let them ring doorbells they would never ring any other day, and talk to people they would never talk to. We loosen the apron strings just a little bit, and compensate by creating a lot of rules and procedures to make sure they're still OK when we do.
To be sure, there's nothing wrong with being careful on Halloween. There's no harm in trying to keep our little ones safe, and avoiding unnecessary dangers. It just probably would make the evening a little more fun for the whole family if we all kept in mind that the biggest chance we take with our kids on Halloween probably has more to do with tooth decay and childhood obesity than with the evening itself.
Thanks to Quarterbacker Alan over at Poor Mojo Newswire for the article about candy tampering.
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Meet the Quarterback
- Naomi Zikmund-Fisher
- is a clinical social worker, former school Principal and a Crisis Consultant for schools and community organizations. You can learn more about her at www.SchoolCrisisConsultant.com
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