When you and your spouse were working out your custody agreement, you may not have included Halloween among the holidays for which to work out a plan. Maybe you haven’t yet begun the divorce process but are parenting in different homes. As Halloween fast approaches, if you have a child who still relies on you to make their Halloween festivities happen, it’s time to think about how you can both be part of this holiday.
Fortunately, Halloween is far more than one day. It can include a multitude of events at your child’s school, your workplace, at your church or another place of worship and more. You and your co-parent can work out a way to divvy up accompanying your child to these events. The same is true when it comes to Halloween preparation, like choosing a costume to carving pumpkins.
How should you handle trick-or-treating?
If the big event for your child is still at the age where trick-or-treating is the main event, you’ll need to decide how you want to handle that. There are numerous choices. You just have to determine what works best for your family – most specifically, for your child.
You can let your child go trick-or-treating with whichever parent has custody that night. If you live near each other, you can each take your child out for a bit. If the two of you can get along well enough to manage trick-or-treating together, that can be an option. Of course, if you have friends who have offered to take your child with them, that may solve a lot of problems.
Think about which of these options you can live with. Then ask your child what they would like to do.
If your child still has a few more years ahead of them where they’ll actually want to do anything with you on or around Halloween, consider working it into your custody agreement and parenting plan. This can make the holiday less stressful for everyone.