making halloween less scary for little kids

Halloween can be a bit of a dichotomy, when you have young children. They are old enough to understand the concept of dressing up to be someone or something else, and the understand that when they do this on Halloween and go to other people’s homes, they get free candy. Excitement! What they likely won’t understand is what scary characters and scenes have to do with it. Why the scary, decomposing dead people, Mom? Good question, kid. When your children are very small, trying to explain why we …