Every year your child goes trick or treating the first thing that every parent says when they get home is, “Don’t eat the candy until I check it.”. The parent then goes through the ritual of emptying the entire contents of their child’s plastic pumpkin or Halloween bag on the floor or on the table.
To be checked thoroughly you must inspect each and every candy for holes, tears or open ends. This is a job for the parent’s, as they know what demented human beings are capable of doing. In the process though of checking their children’s candy they are distracted by their own favorite candy. “Can I have this?”, some parents might ask. After all we like candy just as much as our kids do, but we cannot go trick or treating. It just wouldn’t look right, so we must ask our children to share.
Some kids are ready to share and those are the ones that the parents don’t even have to ask, the kids offer it to them. Where are those kids? It is more common for a parent to say, “Can I have this?” and the child replies with a resounding, “No”. Why must we do that when we can go and buy our own. I think, for us, it is the excitement of getting it without having to shell out a dime.
We are the parents, we have jobs, the kids don’t. We can drive to the store and buy our own. Leave the kids candy alone, for crying out loud.
I remember a day when I asked for some candy from the Halloween collection. We had our own. I don’t know why I had asked. Did I just want to see if someone would share theirs with me? I received my answer shortly after asking. I got a, “Sure Mom, you can have that and you can have this too”. I felt kind of like a heel after that, but I got my confirmation loud and clear. I had raised an unselfish child and that made me smile.