It was still about 2 weeks to Halloween, but we had some very early trick or treater’s apparently.
We live on a dead end street and have been here about a year. We mostly keep to ourselves but say hello if we take our elderly dog for a walk up the street. There are several families with children who run up and down the street playing at each others homes, but they have always been polite and don’t even get too loud when they are outside. All in all, its a nice, quiet place.
The other evening however we met some strange neighbor children. It was a nice day so we had the windows and doors open (screen door closed and locked) so our cats could enjoy the outdoors from the safety of inside the house. My sister and I were watching TV in the front room when suddenly two young girls appeared on our porch and peered in our screen door. The older was about 13 and the younger maybe 10 at the most.
“Do you have any candy?” The older one asks without so much as a hello. We don’t know these kids and we have maybe seen them before but as I said, we keep to ourselves.
We stare dumbfounded at the pair and my sister stammers that no we do not. The girl points to a bag of M&Ms on the table. Now this bag is obviously open. My sister, having recovered more now, tells the duo that while she did forget about those, we don’t even know the girls, nor their parents or if their mother would even want them to have candy.
The two girls run off and we just stare at each other trying to figure out what just happened, but that’s not even the end! The older girl returns just as quickly and happily announces their mom said its OK.
At this point our dog woke up and, realizing someone is at the door, starts barking. She is mostly blind and near entirely deaf so its hard to get her to stop once she starts so I’m trying to quiet the dog while my sister tells the girls again we don’t even know them nor their mother and are not going to just give them candy. The girl steps off the porch again and calls for her mom to come over to tell us its OK for her to have our candy. Fortunately Mom was too busy and told her to come back to the house and the girl yelled “Never mind!” as she ran home finally for good. We decided the cats had had enough fresh air and closed the door and had a laugh once our dog went back to sleep. We still do not know any of their names. 1020-17
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You can’t make this stuff up. Candy, yet! What if they wanted your video gaming equipment? “But, Your Honor- my mom said it was okay for us to have it!”.
If it was “ok” for them to have candy why doesn’t their mom buy it for them instead of expecting strangers to provide it?
Wow.
“Please ask your mother if she considers it polite to ask total strangers for things you want. If she believes it is polite, then I am sorry to inform you that we disagree, and you are not welcome here.”
Nope, I probably wouldn’t say (all of) this, but I would take a cue from my spine-of-steel mother who would sit down with kids from our neighborhood and talk with them about nice manners. Yes, she sometimes got yelled at by parents for being a busybody (once, for giving handkerchiefs to the kids with runny noses). But I also recall playmates thanking her years later for lessons learned when they wound up at our table and were taught how to hold a fork, chew with their mouths closed, and to not guzzle liquids to wash down half-chewed food. Life skills like decent manners are important, and if you’re not learning them at home, you will get schooled elsewhere.
This is when I’d say, “Come back in a costume on Halloween and you’ll get candy then.”
I never heard of such a thing. You would think a 13 year old would know better.
A 13 year old knows what she’s been taught. It’s clear what she’s been taught.
“No, but we will on Halloween. Come back then”
This behavior on the part of tweens is so incredibly dangerous, I’m stunned. I don’t care if you are neighbors, they don’t know you well. You are basically strangers to them. I don’t think this is just about etiquette. This is about safety of children. When schools in my area do fundraising now, the representatives of the candy companies, etc., and the school personnel tell the students to only go to the homes of people who are friends of their parents. They are specifically told not to go to homes up and down their street. Going around asking people for candy is dangerous. Unbelievable.
Lol, I remember explaining to my daughter (she was 4 or 5) that we couldn’t go trick-or-treating on November 15th, because you could only do that on Halloween, and that any other day of the year, it was called something else: Begging.
Honestly, this would have made me laugh out loud!
-Dawn
I’m a huge candy and sweets lover. I think I’ve just discovered a new tactic to getting more of all that! Just walk around looking for sweets and then ask for some. ; )
I wonder if the girls’ mother fully realized what her daughter’s were doing. Since she wasn’t there witnessing it, I could see her daughters going back to her with some convoluted story about how the OP offered them candy all on her own.
Or mom assumed that OP was the parent pf one of the girls’ friends.
That’s what I’m thinking. They ran back and said “Hey the neighbor over there has M&Ms and said that I had to ask you first!”
But I’m shocked that these kids are tweens/early teens and are doing this kind of stuff. 10-13 years old tends to be when they understand basics like “don’t ask strangers for candy” o.O So I bet their mom doesn’t know that they’re pulling this kind of stunt.
This reminds me of the story of the new neighbor who came over and helped himself to a glass of juice the LW was squeezing on her porch. Things like this blow my mind!!
My sister and I went to our neighbor’s house, knocked on her back door and asked for something to eat several times before the neighbor finally told our mother. Mom was mortified! LOL we were 5 and 6 at the time. I still remember doing it! It seemed like a normal thing to do at the time.
That is indeed very strange and also concerning that two random kids would just go up to your door asking for candy. And I certainly hope that perhaps the mother was unaware of the full story because otherwise she is condoning her daughters to ask for and take candy from strangers. Something that every parent normally teaches their children not to do.
If the kids should ever come back asking for candy, regardless if you actually have any or not, tell them you will not be giving any candy to them until Halloween.
My response would be that it is dangerous to ask strangers for candy or to just go up to a strangers door.
Were they even wearing costumes?
Mom probably thought you offered her candy. She probably would be mortified if she knew her kid was showing up at peoples’ houses demanding candy. Talk to Mom. Couch it in concern that her daughter is showing up at strangers’ houses asking for candy.
This sounds like something my sister would have done. She had a need to push boundaries. We also had very limited parenting. But as we were running wild she was never shy about asking complete strangers for change. She would say that we were needing to call parents or take a bus somewhere but actually she just wanted candy money. We were hungry children but I think she would have done it anyway. A friend of mine would draw pictures or rip out a page of a coloring book and color it and then try to sell it for $0.35 at neighbors houses. I was always mortified but some people just have no shame. Neither one of them ever grew out of these traits of asking for stuff that they had no right to. Or just flat-out taking whatever they wanted.
My aunts used to tell the story in Amish country PA where Amish children, hearing the tales of English children who got candy, appeared on their doorstep with a very hesitant ‘trick or treat’!
My aunts gave them candy. For sure, their parents probably did not know! And they did not tell them.