HALLOWEEN FRIGHTS
Halloween is an interesting holiday. We dress our children up as scary monsters, then tell them to walk around and ask for candy from even scarier individuals. This after we usually have lectured them about never talking to strangers. Do we wonder why children find adults so confusing?

While most elementary school and teen kids use Halloween as a chance to test their parents' boundaries on gory and gross, Halloween can be a frightening time for toddlers. Imagination kicks into high gear in two-year-olds. They start testing their independence, and with that independence they are distancing themselves from their parents, even if it's only an arm's length away as opposed to clinging to your leg. Toddlers begin to realize they have control over their environment, and while this is a developmental milestone that makes us proud, it is also the attitude that causes us the most grief.

With a burgeoning imagination comes a multitude of fears. Suddenly your toddler will begin to see the monster in the closet, or under the bed, or in the dark hallway. Night terrors are common, and even though they may spark fear in your own imagination, they are benign. Kids need to realize there are scary things out there, but also that they can overcome those scary things. The world is opening up to your toddler, and as we all know, that can be a little frightening.

Enter Halloween, where prizes are awarded for being the scariest, the most ghoulish, or the grossest. Talk about a script for a nightmare! How can you let your toddler experience the fun of Halloween without spending the next two weeks getting kicked in the ribs as he snuggles between you and your spouse in your bed all night? Planning ahead is the key.

There are several good books to introduce your child to Halloween. While "Where the Wild Things Are" is not strictly about Halloween, it introduces children to the monster in the closet - and turns it into his friend. This is a good one to start out with any time of the year. It's a great "Kid Power" book.

For the board book set, "This Is Not a Pumpkin" by Bob Staake introduces children to jack-o-lanterns. Once you read this book with your toddler, you can then get a small pumpkin and let them help carve it. I wouldn't recommend giving them a knife, but they can help by scooping out the insides (a gooey mess - what kid wouldn't love that?) and drawing the design. In addition, if you have a steady hand, you can let them hold onto your wrist as you carve the pumpkin.

If the thought of getting any sharp objects within ten feet of your toddler sends you into a panic, get out the finger paints. Let them paint the pumpkin either in a jack-o-lantern style or a Jackson Pollock inspired masterpiece.

A small notch up the scary totem pole is "Pumpkin Heads!" by Wendell Minor. Replete with gorgeous illustrations, this book goes a bit further by showing a multitude of pumpkin heads. Some are whimsical, like the snowman pumpkin, and some are a bit darker, but the illustrations make them all approachable.

If you have children of different ages, Arthur creator Marc Brown's "Scared Silly! AHalloween Book for the Brave" is sure to become a Halloween favorite. Filled with poems, riddles, jokes and stories of all levels, ranging from funny to scary, this book lets you pick and choose which ones will be appropriate for your children, or read them all. All of these books can be purchased at local bookstores.

A craft that can help uncover the fun behind the scare is to make masks with your child. Get some card stock paper or poster board. Draw a circle roughly the size of your child's face. If you are going to err, err on the side of larger. Cut this circle out. Next, put the circle up to your child's face and mark with a pencil the place for the eyes and the mouth. Cut out the circles for the eyes. Your child can either decorate the mouth or you can cut that out also. Let your child make the mask as scary as they want by gluing yarn on for hair, plastic bugs on the face and pipe cleaners for pronounced eyebrows. You can also glue googly eyes on for a manyeyed monster.

Once your toddler has finished his mask, staple yarn on the side of the mask to tie around your child's head. You can also cut a rubber band and staple each end to the sides of the mask for a snugger fit.

If all else fails, sink to the candy angle. Your child will either end up hating candy because he will equate it with being scared at Halloween, and you won't have to worry about cavities, or end up loving Halloween because he will see it as an opportunity to wallow frenetically in a mountain of treats typically banned by his parents. Isn't that

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