Halloween time is a special time of year. Youngsters get to dress up, go trick-or-treating, have fun like ghouls in the street, but it’s also time for Halloween safety. Unfortunately in this day and age there is a serious need for Halloween safety. You can’t have too many Halloween safety tips. The world is full of predators and victims, and young impressionable trick-or-treaters make easy prey for sick individuals. Add to that speeding cars and darkness, potential problems with candy or costumes, and Halloween can be enough to cause parents to develop ulcers, but if you follow a few simple rules for Halloween safety, Halloween can be as fun and spooky as ever.

For Halloween safety to be effective we should start at the beginning, with the costume. Halloween is all about dressing up and pretending, which is a fun and wonderful thing, unfortunately not all suits are designed with safety in mind. Stay away from suits that are oversized or might suffocate a small child. Adhere to the age warnings and do away with any piece that might be constrictive or get caught on something like a fence or door. Also, stay away from dark suits. If the costume is dark, you can purchase reflective stick-ons that glow in the dark and reflect headlight beams so a car can see your child in the dark. It’s also a good idea to carry a flashlight, though the best idea of all is to trick-or-treat before it gets too late.

The second rule is very simple; follow the guidelines of your locality. Most towns set dates and times for accepted trick-or-treating, and it’s not always on October thirty-first, either. There is safety in numbers, which leads us to the third of our Halloween safety tips: never let children go trick-or-treating without adult supervision. In fact, it is best to travel with multiple children and multiple parents, the more eyes and ears the better.

The best part of Halloween, all scary fun aside, is of course, the bags and bags of candy one can get simply by dressing up and knocking on doors. The biggest tip for Halloween safety and a smooth Holiday with no mishaps is to get rid of any piece of candy that is not fully wrapped. If there’s any question, chuck it. It’s a piece of candy. Any homemade items such as candy apples or marshmallow treats, cookies, or cakes must immediately be tossed. It doesn’t matter how much love went into the treat or who you think might have made it, there are too many instances of children being poisoned or candy and food goods being tampered with at Halloween. Why would anyone want to take a chance when it comes to the health and welfare of the child? There’s no need to turn the food down at the door, to embarrass some well meaning man or woman, simply discard anything that did not come from the store that is not individually wrapped. Even the wrapped candy must be gone over with a fine tooth comb. Anyone can inject candy with a foreign substance, so if there is a tear, whole, or opening in the candy, discard it as well. It is far better to err on the safe side come Halloween than to take a chance nd have the worst trick imaginable played on your child and your family.

Happy Halloween.