The worst situation a parent can experience is seeing their child get harmed from a children’s holiday. Every year, predators hide in their homes in hopes of finding an innocent child to kidnap when they knock on their door for a treat. However, It’s not just kidnapping. Children have been receiving dangerous substances in their candy as well as materials like glass. For fun events like halloween, grown adults need to take action and learn how predators can make our treats into their tricks.
Parents don’t realize the severity of their children’s safety on Halloween night. From pedestrians scrabbling the streets, to taking candy from strangers, there could be many things that could go wrong and that’s not including abduction. According to Today.com, a police department in Ohio offered to X-Ray halloween candy after a KitKat bar and a package of Sour Patch Kids distributed during a city trick-or-treating event had been poked with sewing needles. Through this, it can be conveyed that misinterpreting whom we think is just a regular old house owner, could actually be a criminal.
“As a 10 year old opening a snickers bed, I thought it would just be normal. However, when I opened it I noticed a small shiny item embedded into it, after I told my mom, she noticed that it was a piece of glass.” said Ayna Chaudhary, sophomore at BWHS.
Chaudhary’s experience with Halloween further extended her parents’ concerns with this holiday. Later, Chaudhary explained that her parents developed a fear that it would happen again, so they developed habits to make sure that she was safe while eating her candy. This could happen to kids at any time and at any moment, so instead of waiting to develop safety habits, parents should be educated on what precautions to take during trick or treating and after.
“After that, my parents developed a fear that it would happen again, so they always checked my candy before I ate it.” said Ayna Chaudhary, sophomore at BWHS.
There are many ways parents can combat their concerns and prepare their children for any type of mishap, not including situations regarding strangers. For example, they can be aware of issues regarding costumes all the way to who their child is going with. On Halloween night, age never matters, anyone can be a victim.
According to Caring for Kids, a child should not eat candy until their parents have inspected it after they reach home. Children should wear reflective tape anywhere on their body to insure that they are seen in the dark. An important one is to not go near houses which are not well lit, especially a house that the child is not familiar with. These 3 rules are just the tip of the iceberg, but they can further help parents with assistance in making rules.
“Personally, I never let my children go more than 2 blocks away from our house. Our neighborhood is filled with houses, so 2 blocks is already a stretch. I am not familiar with anyone after that, so there’s no confirmation on what type of person lives in that house” said Mallika Vallebhaneni, a parent of two children.
Vallebhaneni stated that she doesn’t trust houses she hasn’t seen. This is a very important way of protecting kids from predators. Not letting them go to strangers’ houses already decreases the chances of anything happening to them by a lot. In fact, not only does it protect them from abduction, but it also protects them from mistakenly consuming a candy that was laced. As said before, people never know who lives in undetected houses, a simple citizen looking predator can be the monster of someone’s child’s halloween.
“I didn’t really know that Halloween was so dangerous. I go to strangers’ houses, but now that I’ve heard things, I don’t know anymore.” said Maanya Nandamuri, sophomore at BWHS.
After being told about the multiple different cases of children finding dangerous objects in their food, and how people can get abducted just by ringing a doorbell, Nandamuri said that she doesn’t think she will be going trick or treating strangers houses anymore.
There is a significant lack of knowledge among the general public when it comes to the dangers of halloween. That is why, the experienced ones, educated parents, and frankly any important governmental figures or administration should post about what to look for so that it catches parents attention. Remember, “Demons are like obedient dogs, they come when they are called.” said Remy De Gourmont.
