Trick-or-Treating Safety Tips

Halloween is an extremely fun holiday, filled with parties, costumes, and lots of candy and food! However, it is important to keep in mind the safety risks of trick-or-treating and even Halloween home decor. If you are moving to Corpus Christi before the holiday, here are a few things to keep in mind when getting your home and family ready for your first holiday in Texas!

Costume Safety:

• When choosing a costume for your child, opt for one that is made with bright colors. Since trick-or-treating is typically done in the evening, there is a lot of trick-or-treating traffic on the sidewalks and even many kids with the same costume-know how to pick your child out from the crowd.

• Add a little piece of reflective material to your child's costume. When walking the streets trick-or-treating, it is best to be able to be seen in the dark by cars. You can either choose or make a costume with reflective material, or attach a piece of reflective tape either on your child's shoes or candy bag so that they are visible.

• Understand that masks can obstruct your child's vision. Even if they think they can see out of their mask, the reality is that most masks obstruct your vision in some way or another-possibly your peripheral vision.

• If your child's costume adorns a weapon of some sort, make sure the edges are blunt and cannot cause any harm so that they are not mistaken for actual weapons. The weapons should essentially look much like play toys and be plastic.

Trick-or-Treating Safety:

• Go over some simple guidelines with your kids before leaving the house

• Trick-or-treat in a group and make sure that all of the children stick together.

• NEVER enter a house

• Carry a flashlight. Carrying a flashlight will allow you to keep your group visible and help light your path

• Do not let your children eat candy until it has been inspected by you. It has been a long safety precaution to check all candy to make sure that it looks properly wrapped and not tampered with. Stray away from any hand-outs that are home-made. Although it may seem like a nice gesture, you never know if a harmful ingredient has been added.

• Monitor how much candy your children eat each day. Don't just leave your child with all of their candy. Try to limit them to a couple pieces a day for obvious health reasons. Try to feed them a large meal before trick-or-treating so that they will not want to consume lots of candy afterwards.

• If you think that your children are old enough and responsible enough to go trick-or-treating alone with friends, give them a cell phone to check in with you every once in a while.

• Trick-or-treat at a mall for another way to avoid potential traffic accidents that can occur while trick-or-treating outside.

Make Sure Your Home is Decorated Safely:

• Avoid using anything that has to be lit with fire. Opt for safer methods of illuminating your Halloween decorations so as to avoid a fire hazard.

• If you are passing out candy, make sure your home is well lit to avoid children from tripping over anything.

• Control your pets by putting them on a leash or confined outside so that they don't scare small children.