Parenting Dilemmas
So I mentioned in my last blog entry that I had a recent parenting dilemma. I haven’t told anyone else about this yet and am so curious as to what other parents’ opinions will be.
Our neighborhood is filled with young children. Every October, there is a Halloween tradition of “booing” your neighbors. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the tradition, it goes something like this. One family sneakily delivers a bag of treats to another neighbor’s house. They leave it on the front porch, ring the doorbell and then run away. You aren’t supposed to know who “boo’ed” you. Inside the bag are usually pieces of candy or other little Halloween themed prizes. There’s also a poem that goes with it and a picture of a ghost. The family is supposed to hang the ghost in their window until Halloween; to help keep other “phantoms”away. Then they have to “boo” two other neighbors to keep it going. Well for the past week and a half or so our neighbors have proudly displayed their ghosts in their windows, and for the past week and a half my 6 year old, Cody, has asked “When is someone going to boo us?” Yup, that’s right, somehow we were overlooked this year. 
Each afternoon this week, he would diligently hang a sign on our front door reading “Please boo us!” in his adorable first grade scrawl. Then each night before bed, he would peek out on the porch to see if it happened yet before retiring his sign for the night. On Friday night he changed his sign to read, “Please boo us now!” It was completely heartbreaking, night after night watching him repeatedly being disappointed.
Fast forward to last night. My husband and I just couldn’t take his disappointment any longer and took matters into our own hands. As I’m sure you can guess, we found the website with the ghost poem and printed off our own copy. Then we filled a bag with candy and sticky hands for each one of the boys and planted it on the front porch. When Cody got up this morning, he immediately spotted it through the windows beside the front door. He was absolutely delighted that he had at last been boo’ed. It made the kid’s day!
I know disappointment is a part of growing up, but it’s so awful to watch with your own children! So I’m curious, what do you think? I’ll admit, it felt really weird to do it. However, there was no way I could let Halloween come and go- leaving Cody totally out of this tradition. What would you have done in my shoes?
I agree that disappointment is part of growing up but I also understand where you are coming from. Children want to fit in and be a part of what all the other children are doing so it’s hard for them to sometimes understand why they were left out. Kids can be especially creul sometimes too. I know I’ve seen houses with two or three “boos” on the door. That is insane, honestly as a parent I wouldn’t even hang anymore than one of those “boos” on the door and I would probably have my child regift the other “boos” they received along with creating their own. I probably would have done the same thing you did and who says that more than one person in the neighborhood can’t be the inital “booer”. The “boos” have to start somewhere and if it’s a large neighborhood it’s probably best to have two or three boos going at a time to cover the whole neighborhood.