As soon as your little one is born, you eagerly await each and every holiday: Fourth of July and Labor Day pass with new-kid excitement. When that very first Halloween looms on the calendar you count down the days, giddy with anticipation. 
You the doting parent, immediately find the cutest infant costume, like a pumpkin suitto zip them up in. They can’t walk, they’re babies, but they can still celebrate in costume and stroller. You’re thinking: just wait until next year, then we’ll really be able to trick-or-treat.
Another year comes and goes, and October arrives with its tell-tale signs; autumnal scents of fermenting leaves, cool, clear blue skies, pumpkins and another opportunity for your little one to really trick-or-treat. Last year, you walked throughout the neighborhood armed with your pumpkin-ed cutie. 
Not this year, your little bundle of joy is walking on their own. It’s getting dark, you know what that means; soon you and your pumpkin (yep, it’s another pumpkin suit, but it’s a 2T, not the six month from the previous year) will be hitting the streets.
She’s excited, well sort of, it’s hard to tell with a one year old, but when you arrive at your neighbor’s house for your first “trick or treat”, you end chasing her down and scooping her up out of their kitchen where she ran off to as soon as they opened the door. Well, maybe next year you think. Next year will be better.
Yes, there is a small window of what I call, “the official trick-or-treating epoch.” It starts at age of five and runs all the way through 12 years old. Now, I’m not saying you can’t go door to door donned in blood, guts and wigs at age 15. Trust me, my older teens show no signs of slowing down. What I mean is that magical time of childhood lies within those seven years. By age five, they’ve got the spooky holiday pretty well figured out.
They’ve been making nothing but construction paper pumpkin and witch projects at kindergarten, at snack time they snack on orange and black cookies and really got to help mom carve the jack-o-lantern, that they picked out at the local pumpkin patch. The subsequent years then fall into pretty predictable phases, some children trick-or-treat in their usual attire, witch suits start tiny and grow to adult sizes and still others want to be something very different and sometimes, very extreme, each year.
By the time they’ve reached those tween years they’ve outgrown mom and dad’s company. As a matter of fact, you are sort of persona non-grata at this point. They’ve traded your company for those of like ages, don’t take it personally, your little ones are gaining their independence, wanting to branch off and do their own thing.
If you’re still feeling a little uncomfortable about allowing your gaggle of twelve year olds to run around the night, unchaperoned, then just do like I do; grab a costume and follow behind them. Don’t forget, luck is with you tonight, everyone is wearing masks and disguises. You just hope they won’t recognize you in your Hunchback of Notre Dame costume. 
If fortune smiles, no one noticed you lagging two houses behind them. Now you wonder if you could use it when you’re tailing them in the mall.
Emma Rae Curtis is a costume/dressing up/makeup & accessories expert. She mainly writes about Halloween but also about all things costume and dress-up related.
