Our neighborhood organized trick or treating last Saturday. We got around 35 kids in three groups. Halloween wasn't a thing here when I moved here. You couldn't buy Halloween decorations or costumes. It's still not as big as in the US, but there has been a shift in the last 10 years or so. When my kids were little, they wanted to go trick or treating, so my FIL took them out. No one knew what trick or treating was and only three houses had something to give the kids. Over here, kids go door to door and sing songs to get candy on St. Martin day(November 11th) but that's becoming less and less popular. But this year, I bought 6 bags of candy and had very little left and I only gave two pieces to every kid. So we had about 35 last Saturday, then I think 5 more on actual Halloween, and then 4 more on November 1st, though I think they were the same ones as the night before. The organized event send out flyers in mail slots with a printout of a ghost to put on your door if you will hand out candy. They divide the kids by age into groups and send the Littles out at like 6:30 and then send out the next group about a half hour or 45 minutes after that, with parental chaperones who lead them around, and they only go to the houses with a ghost on the door. They'll even provide the candy for you if you want to hand it out but can't afford it. (we live in a low income neighborhood with a lot of refugees and foreigners, and just poor people) this year was a bit sad, because they really went all out, but their image of Halloween is a really Hollywood horror movie stereotype. They think everyone dresses in scary or grotesque costumes, like zombies, scary clowns, murderers, etc. You don't see princesses and pirates and such. And that's fine, but what they ALSO did was make it like a haunted house throughout the neighborhood where there were machete - weilding clowns, and hatchet - weilding murderers, and witches, etc who chased them down the street as they went door to door. My first group of kids to arrive had one girl just sobbing. These kids were like... 2 to 5 years old. And they were chasing them down with (fake) knives and reaper swords and such. I had seen some guy in a creepy clown costume, but I didn't know he was part of the event. So I thought the girl just found it scary going to strangers' houses, etc. So I asked her if she thought it was kind of scary, if she was ok, and she points down the street to the clown and the witch and one of the adults with a 2 year old in her arms said they had just passed a suspenseful part. Then I paid attention and could see the clown guy would wait and as soon as kids came into view, he'd go running and he'd roar at them and they'd scream, and then eventually he'd come back to his post. I thought it was just him until the end of the event when a whole bunch of scary adults with various weapons gathered on the corner just after the last group had been here. So it was part of the event... That is what they think happens at Halloween. They didn't separate the trick or treating from the haunted house. Those kids are probably traumatized. The whole evening was punctuated by roars and subsequent screams of children. Very sad.
I'm so sorry about your son. I'm very lucky that my kids are both pretty rational and look more at the facts. Neither one of them are glued to their phones or social media. A plays computer games a lot, but he's never been really interested in social media platforms like Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, etc. And while E has had all of those at various times, she's pretty good at seeing through the rhetoric. We do have lively discussions, but we don't disagree with each other. E also had a class in high school where a large part was identifying propaganda techniques. And this was a class that she had to take for several years in a row and do projects about, and they actually used American political parties as the subjects and had to make posters using certain techniques and explain why those techniques are used. They had to draw a political party out of a hat and do a presentation as though they were from that party and try to persuade voters to vote for them. She can watch an ad, or a speech, or news report, and tell you what technique they are using and what they are trying to accomplish with it. It's sad that most Americans probably don't recognize when or how they are being manipulated. Maybe if your son is buying into the propaganda, it's better if he DOESN'T vote? I don't know... I want people to vote, but sometimes I think people don't understand what they are even voting for, and that's dangerous. The issues get so muddled up because the politicians are dishonest and people don't know what it all means. They make choices they probably wouldn't make if they had only the facts and if they had explanations. I didn't vote on my ballot on the part about some referendum because I don't understand what the jargon means. I don't want to vote either for it or against it, because I have no idea what it would do. I don't know who it would benefit or who it would harm. I can't make an informed choice, so I left it blank, which I guess is the same as making the choice not to vote. So maybe it's better, if your son is confused, that he doesn't cast a vote he can't take back, but that has serious consequences. And maybe you at least made him stop and think enough to be able to go back and look into some of your arguments and maybe he'll learn something from them. But I'm so sorry you are being hurt by it... I can only imagine how that feels. My cousins are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me, and one of them stopped talking to me after my dad's funeral. Her sister made some comment and I played nice and didn't say anything, and the other apologized for her sister's comment, saying she believed such and such and so I said it was ok, that I didn't understand how someone could think that way, but that I wouldn't let it bother me. Apparently she took offense at me saying I didn't understand how someone could support a certain thing, because she apparently agrees with her sister, just didn't say it out loud. She stopped talking to me. This was a day or two before my dad's funeral, so she didn't talk to me at the funeral at all and for MONTHS afterward. When I was going through dad's safety deposit box, I found a bunch of old jewelry that had been his mom's, or grandma's, and I offered some to my cousins and asked if we could get together to go through it so they could choose what they wanted. She never called me back. I had no clue why she was mad at me until I started seeing propaganda on her Facebook and realized she must have been offended that I disagree with her on certain issues. It's sad that she would let that ruin our relationship when I told her I loved them no matter what their views were... She apparently doesn't love me the same way. But I don't live in the same house with them and we see each other once every few years for a couple of hours. It must be very hard to continually share space with someone who treats you the way your son did. I'm sorry.
Plus, when he's not here, I can cook lighter meals that I know aren't filling enough for him.
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