For most kids Halloween is scary fun, but for others, with anxiety, autism or various neurological conditions — it’s just scary.
Dr. Raman Marwaha, a child psychiatrist at Raritan Bay Medical Center, said preparing your child for what they may see and hear can help.
“Talking with the child about that on Halloween you’re gonna have an adventure, when you go out you may be wearing a costume, other people may be wearing a costume, and that is an adult, not a child in a costume,” he said.
Doctors point out that even saying "trick or treat" sounds simple, but for children with social anxiety, being forced to speak to strangers on demand, at door after door, in the dark, can be exhausting. And the brains of such children simply don’t process the holiday the same way others do.
“Now for kids who are neurodivergent, sometimes these processes may bypass the frontal cortex where you can process what’s real, what’s not real. The frontal cortex is the one where you think before acting,” said Marwaha.
“A preschooler sometimes may have difficulty differentiating between what’s real and what’s fantasy, so for a preschooler sometimes some things may be scarier,” he said.
Doctors say the holiday taps directly into developmentally normal preschoolers who are wired to fear supernatural and 'monstrous' figures—so what looks like 'just fun' to one child can feel genuinely threatening to another.
Marwaha said if when all is said and done if a child would rather stay home and give out candy to visitors, that’s ok too.