It’s October and holiday season is here!
While it’s exciting, fun and the kids are going crazy for costumes and candy, Halloween can also be a frightening time for parents and caregivers! Add in COVID concerns and you’ve got a perfect storm!
Just last week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky offered her expert advice on Halloween safety .
Walensky recommended trick-or-treating outside, limiting crowds and avoiding crowded Halloween parties.
Today, let’s look at the BEST Halloween safety tips from Security Experts because who doesn’t want to have the best halloween ever?
1 Light Up Your Home
Whether you will be home, or not, during Halloween and the evening when you expect Trick or Treaters, light up your home.
While parents take their children out to Trick or Treat in the neighborhood, criminals use this holiday to look for opportunities for a quick and easy break-ins. We recommend you make sure your outdoor lighting is working, sensor lights are properly installed to go off when someone approaches your front door and if nothing else, place your indoor lights on timers
Don’t turn off the porch light to discourage Trick or Treaters, it might discourage them but it will encourage criminals!
2 Light Up The Kids!
Personal safety is important.
Keep kids safe from motor vehicles and falling or tripping in the dark, by making them visible in the dark as well as providing them with enough light for them to find their way onto sidewalks and to front doors!
Do this by
- adding reflective materials to their costume
- giving them a flashlight to hold (if they are old enough)
- walking with them with your own flashlight
- using headlamps (if they are old enough)
- putting lights in the Trick or Treat bag
- adding lights to strollers, carts, bikes, wagons etc.
3 Food Safety Rules
Kids love candy, and people love giving out candy to adorable, costumed kids. Not every child can tolerate all candy, and not all candy is safe for kids or all ages.
Make sure you go over the ‘food rules’ with your child. Make them understand why they should not eat anything on the road while Trick or Treating. Instead, pack a few snacks and a few bottles of water for your ‘team’ as you go on the road! They will get hot, thirsty and hungry and the temptation might just be too much if no alternative is available.
Kids with allergies like peanuts or gluten should never eat anything not parent-approved, and Halloween is no reason to make an exception!
4 Go Where You Are Familiar
It’s oh so tempting or parents to take a child to neighborhoods where there is a lot of candy to be had. Remember that if you are in unfamiliar territory, you sacrifice personal safety. If you don’t know where you are, you have no escape route if something goes awry and you are more likely to be lost, go into a bad part of town, or run into trouble.
For Halloween, stick to the familiar, or go Trick or Treating with friends who do know the neighborhood! If teenagers go out on their own, be strict with location limits!
5 Candles, Lights and Noise, Oh My!
Who doesn’t love decorating for Halloween. We’ve seen neighbors go all-out to set up elaborate haunted houses, crazy mazes and realistic display for this holiday. As you would with any type of decorations (think Christmas!), make sure to always adhere to safety standards as far as candles, plugged in lights and noise!
Kids scare easily and if you scare them with sudden, loud noises, a child could run into traffic!
While it is fun to scare, we recommend you save those types of decorations and elaborate set ups for private parties, not for the Trick or Treat portion of the evening!
Halloween 2021: Have a Blast But be Safe!
While we haven’t had the best luck in the last year and a half, many of us are ready to give Halloween 2021 a go! It goes without saying to continue to practice social distancing (as we did in 2020) and if you do not feel safe Trick or Treating, don’t go.
If you are looking for additional and more in-depth, in Personal Safety Tips for a Stress-Free and Safe Halloween we discussed safety tips for personal safety.
However you will be celebrating, we hope you have a blast!
