How parents can navigate Halloween meltdowns and the Daylight Saving Time change

Welcome back. Halloween is fun, but pairing a candy sugar rush with falling back an hour for daylight saving tomorrow, it can be a recipe for some overtired and emotional kids. Between itchy costumes, scary decorations, and Sunday morning early risers, parents have a lot on their plates this holiday weekend. So to help us work through it all, we want to welcome therapist Sasha Ginsberg-Krasny. Thanks so much for being here. And you have some advice about some of the biggest sources of Halloween parenting stress. So let's start from young to older with little. Little ones, you mentioned that some of those meltdowns can come from their costumes. What do you do if you're about to head out the door, your child says, no, I can't wear this, it's too itchy, it's too tight? Thanks for having me. Happy Halloween. My biggest advice for that would be to really set a cope-ahead plan. Cope-ahead is something we do in dialectical behavioral therapy. Try on the costume a few hours before, if not the morning of Halloween. Just try it on, make sure all those itchy parts and all sorts of size issues are fixed before. You can just solve the problem Before you head out. And then if there is a last minute crisis as you're heading out the door, should you have a backup or just a plan B? I mean, I would just say, stay calm. As parents, it tends to get really hectic and the overstimulation affects us as well. So just stay calm and try and validate your kid and say, I know. It's not the most comfortable, but I don't think you need to have a plan B. I think you just stay calm, validate and move on. And move on, just walk out the door and hopefully they'll forget about it. Right. When something is too scary for a younger child, what's the best way for a parent to respond? So when your kid is really young, you can walk up to the house with them. You can also skip the scary, spooky houses. Thank you. You just kind of, like I said, validate and say, you know, things look spooky. These are all pretend. And you can just skip over that house. What's your best advice for parents trying to police the candy consumption or get kids to pace themselves? Make a plan. Tell your child that, you know, while we're trick or treating, we're not going to snack on candy because there's, you know, it's hard to set limits while everyone's walking and it's kind of chaotic. And then when you get home, the best part of Halloween is dumping your candy on the floor and seeing what you got. And then they can pick like three or four pieces of candy that night and then save the rest. This year, Halloween falls on a Sunday and the fall daylight saving time change. And even though it's an extra hour of sleep, there's still an adjustment. So what should parents expect and how should they manage it Sunday morning? So we all know that, especially our little kids, we get really vulnerable to emotions when we're tired, when we're hungry, when we have too much sugar, all sorts of things. So we really need to take care of our bodies. And I think for parents, They, you know, it is kind of an extra hour of sleep, but it's the adjustment. So kids go to bed, when they go to bed, we're so happy Halloween is on a Saturday. And let them wake up when they wake up on Sunday, make sure they have a really good breakfast. And I would lay low on Sunday, just family movies or read a book, just not a lot of plans they can get ready for Monday. You talk a lot about managing expectations as a parent. You even have a term for it, I think radical acceptance. What does that involve? So radical acceptance is one of our main dialectical behavioral therapy skills that we use and it's really accepting life on life's terms. So it's not hoping something else is going to happen. It's just it's kind of like acknowledging, acknowledging what is and factually what is versus wishing something else was going to happen. Perfection is not the goal, right? But for some, it may be tough to accept that when there's a lot of pressure for that perfect picture or experience to share on social media. How should people think about that? I think it's really important to be perfectly imperfect. So no one's perfect. And social media is a... Not reality. So just have a good time. Enjoy the small moments of joy and stay calm during the chaos. Yeah, live in the moment and accept things sometimes are what they are. It is what it is, right? Yes, absolutely. Therapist Sasha Ginsburg-Krasny, thank you so much for the advice and happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. Thank you.