How to get your kid ready for Halloween

By: Jennifer Bullock

Want to try Halloween traditions with your kiddo but not sure where to start? Let me tell you what my approach was with my daughter and what worked and what didn’t. As we all know, nobody is the same, but these tips and ideas may help!

A little background - my daughter is 11 years old and only just last year went legit Trick-or-Treating for the first time in her life. That’s not to say she never dressed up for Halloween; I’ve had her in costumes whenever I could as she was little – costumes mostly consisting of themed shirts or “normal” outfits that just fit a theme. When Halloween rolled around, I decorated the inside of the house and we did a lot of themed art projects, reading material and other worksheets or activities themed to ghosts, witches, pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns and the like. Of the major holidays we celebrate (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas) she really responded to Halloween more than the others. 

So last year this is the approach I took:

1. Decorating: We don’t do really scary things but I don’t shy away from basic imagery - skeletons, witches, haunted houses, ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, etc. While I like to make a lot of my decor, you do not have to be crafty in the least bit. If you have a local bargain shop like The Dollar Store, Dollar General, Aldi, or Five Below - you can find plenty of themed decor and premade crafts to use without needing to break the bank. The more associations with the imagery, the better.
   
   
2. Books, Videos, Worksheets: At the beginning of the month, I made sure that we had at least two books a week that were Halloween themed. So we’d sit down to do our work for the day and one of the reading items would be a book or reading comprehension worksheets themed to Halloween in some way. I have a lot of books on hand, but you can of course head to your local library and stock up, or visit sites like Vooks.com which are video versions of children’s books. (Also they list how long they are- those under 5 min books are GREAT for my kiddo and her attention span.) I also made a very simple worksheet of icons and text of common Halloween items. We used these to type on her AAC device during school sessions.
   
   
3. A social story about Trick-Or-Treating: Again this was put into rotation weekly in our lesson sessions. Repeat repeat repeat. I found this book on TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers): Trick Or Treat Social Story Adapted Book (at the time of writing this post it is listed as a Free book.) It’s an interactive booklet once you print and cut it out, you can laminate and use Velcro so your kiddo can reuse it. But if you don’t have the laminating abilities, just use it as a cut and paste activity.
   
   
4. Costume: This is an interesting area for us specifically. My daughter likes to play pretend with little costumes (accessories, not full scale outfits) like a doctor’s coat, fireman coat, butterfly wings, and a rare tutu now and then. But she wears them for less than 5 minutes and off they go! How was she going to dress up and walk the neighborhood for more than 5 minutes? Thanks to the combination of the above approaches, she started to randomly say (and type on her AAC) “purple fairy costume”. So I immediately jumped on Amazon and found a purple tutu+wings+wand set, and had it immediately shipped - thanks Prime! She was willing to try it on a few times and do her typical 5 minute play with it on. I took this opportunity to repeat with her that it was her “Halloween costume”.
   
   
5. AAC: Using her AAC device was a relatively new thing for her last year, so this worked great. I made a specific page with key Halloween “Trick-or-Treating” words. I also used Trick-or-Treat pages from Nonverbal Autism Homeschool as a guide, and adapted them for my daughter’s use. Click here to download those AAC Trick or Treat templates and watch a sample instruction video from the homeschool AAC course.
    
6. Familiar route: For the last couple of months we had been going on a bike ride (she is still learning, so I walk alongside and guide her) around the neighborhood so this was the exact route we took for Halloween. It was also helpful that during the month of October the houses we’d pass started to decorate for the holiday so we would stop and I would point out the Halloween items. 

On the day-of, we told her it was Halloween and at night we could go Trick-or-Treating, and I referenced the social story we had been learning all month. As the evening began and a few younger kids had come to our door for candy, I asked my daughter if she wanted to get her costume on and go out. She did! So we got her dressed, gave her a bucket, and let her bring her iPad (entertainment/comfort item), turned off our lights, locked up, and started to walk the neighborhood. At the time, she wasn’t accustomed to carrying her AAC device, so I did that for her.

She’d see other groups of kids going up to houses, and after witnessing it a few times, she was willing to try it herself. I’d stand next to her and model on her device (a couple of times, later she did it herself) and thankfully all the neighbors were pretty patient. One tip for a new, possibly timid Trick-or-Treater, wait until the bulk of kids have left the door - they’re usually fast and in a hurry. Go up when it’s slow or be the last one.

When we completed the neighborhood loop she was done (again, same routine from bike riding so she had considered it completed.) She was entertained by her modest amount of candies/trinkets and then she went right back into her normal evening routine at home. She doesn’t like to eat candy so she never ate any of it, but if your kiddo likes candy then you’ll likely need to do what you need to for moderation of that situation.

Will we do it again? Honestly I’m not sure yet, but we have costumes on hand if she’s interested in it this year. Do I personally think we should? Well that’s something to consider for our kiddos who can be subject to habit forming, eloping, and lack of stranger-danger awareness. But those are for you to personally determine based on your kid and their abilities to understand situations. 

But if you’re wanting to try it out this year, I hope the above ideas will help you out!

Jennifer Bullock, Contributing Author

Homeschooling-experienced mom to a tween, non-speaking daughter, Jennifer is also Marketing Outreach Coordinator for The Autism Oasis. With 20+ years experience in marketing, advertising, and social media communications, you will see her occasionally supporting the blog and social media channels with various content related to Autism Oasis.