My teen son wants to be a vampire for Halloween

[wifenmommy]

just curious again - but are there ever abductions and kidnappings during halloween??
i mean, where i live - i think there have been…well i recall from a few yrs bak…(when it was somewhat more popular than it is today)

Ha! As if they would get past my big ole’ cajun, huntin’ lovin’, “the world revolves around my lil princess” of a husband…actually it would probably be quite entertaining to sit back and watch someone try…

Seriously though, I cannot recall, as far as I can remember really anything bad happening on halloween in our area, now as for the rest of the 364 days…

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

So Chicago (in that city they tell em to vote early and vote often)

Dang thats cold, recycle the kids Halloween candy.

Well, they only have an Aldi shopping bag each. If you don’t have Aldi in Alabama, it’s a pretty big bag, and it’s meant to be reused so it’s heavy-duty. We’re talking at least 20 pounds of candy EACH by the time they’re done with trick or treating for the night.

They have been taught, my girls, to be polite when getting a treat, but to bring it home and then tell me they don’t like it. They can’t ditch it on somebody’s lawn, or give it to their other friends, and whatever they do, they cannot feed it to Pop.

When they get home with the first haul, I go through it, looking for the obvious “bad guy” stuff, as well as stuff they don’t like. They make a list. The candy they want to keep goes in a big gallon Ziploc bag, and the recycled candy goes in the pass-out bowl. I cannot of course be caught giving away $100,000 bars, Hershey’s, Butterfingers, Baby Ruths, or any temp. tattoos, pencils, plastic fangs, wax lips, yo-yos or other five-and-dime stuff. I can give away peanut butter kisses, popcorn balls, Nestle’s Crunch, Carlos V bars and Sweet Tarts.

See, I’ve never met candy I didn’t like. So, the more they don’t like that gets recycled, well, then I’m not tempted to eat it.

 

[renatas]

My only concern is that the costumes are modest - she is not going to be some kind of sexy Elvyra with lots of cleavage and a short skirt?

As long as they both are going to behave in a modest manner, I’d not pick this as a fight.

Vampires, ghosts, monsters - these are fairy tales, dressing up as this or a unicorn or a fairy princess all morally neutral.

I totally agree and besides, your son if he is a teen, there are alot of other things you should be worrying about other than what he dresses up as for Halloween. Especially if he has a girlfriend!!!

 

[PatienceAndLove]

I drew the line at the bottle full of pills…

I have the cane, the clothes, and the voice

“You are a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day”

get some tic-tacs and pop them continuously. At least then you’ll have fresh breath

 

[bluerose]

We live in the boondocks… seriously, we would have to drive 20 minutes to get someplace where people would be giving out candy to trick-or-treaters. Besides, my son is 14 and Halloween is “soooo kindergarten, Mom”… however, since it IS a holiday, Mom has to give him some kind of treat. So he’s getting a bag of mini Snickers and a few “vintage” rock t-shirts (Aerosmith, AC/DC, Lynard Skynard) and he doesn’t have to go door to door to get them.

He hated trick-or-treating even when he was little… an hour of tromping around the neighborhood, tripping over his Zorro cape (or else no one knowing who he was because MOM made him wear his jacket over his costume), then getting home and finding that MOM wouldn’t let him have half the treats in his bag anyway (suspicious candy–Public Enemy #1) and the other half turn out to be stuff he doesn’t like, then find out that we got wiped out of all the GOOD candy at home so we can’t even “re-treat” the stuff he got… so much drama!

His cousins (younger ones) have been bugging him to dress up this year, so he decided to compromise… he’ll wear his black jeans and a black t-shirt and vampire teeth. No cape, no makeup, just your average 21st century teenage vampire. He might even lug his skateboard along as a prop.

 

[PatienceAndLove]

His cousins (younger ones) have been bugging him to dress up this year, so he decided to compromise… he’ll wear his black jeans and a black t-shirt and vampire teeth. No cape, no makeup, just your average 21st century teenage vampire. He might even lug his skateboard along as a prop.

Sounds like my vamp costume. Cept I am going as vampiric Hello-Kitty ala, this shirt:
http://img.hottopic.com/is/image/HotTopic/233611_hi?$product$

But anyway- chances are that the OP’s DS and DS’s GF are doing some Twilight thing.

 

[Lui]

I think you should let you 16 year old son make his own decision on a costume. A vampire does not mock the faith, it’s a fictional character.

If a vampire is afraid a a cross and gets burns from a cross wouldn’t that mean that vampires support faith indirectly?

 

[joandarc2008]

Hello, I agree with the other posters I think that this is not one fight worth having unless it is about modesty. Even if HER costume is not modest is that really your place - afterall she has a mother of her own to worry about these things. I wonder a bit about your description of your battle “with her.” as you put it. I am going through much of this with my soon to be MIL and maybe it is just my experience traumatizing me but it seems to me like you may already have a bit of a power struggle going on with the gf. I caution you against this because if this relationship (although they are 16 now) lasts for years to come and turns serious chances are you will lose that power struggle. My df is 30 and his mother had trouble in his own words of letting it go or less respectably “cutting the cord.” For a decade of his adult life she berated any woman that came into it. It has stopped with me and it is simply because I am the first one that is strong enough to insist on being respected, listened to, and have my mother’s place in my life respected. As it is now neither of my in-laws are invited to the wedding by the decision of my df. My parents have keys to our home, his parents have never set foot in it and unless something changes never will. My df also has given me the the right to decide when and if they will meet our adopted child when we adopt in order to not have our child subjected to that negativity and so that he is not blinded by his desire to have a “normal” relationship with his parents. I never wanted it to come to that point but in the end when it did our deacon in Pre-CANA was very clear: the man cleaves himself from his family and clings to his wife. They become one flesh. (Yes, I am paraphrasing.) If this doesn’t apply please don’t take offense it is just something I saw and I don’t want you to have the same heart ache my MIL is having now. I have encouraged my df to have a relationship seperate from his and mine with them but his stance on them is that if they cannot accept us they cannot accept him. I however have not been through the decade of issues he has with them or the two decades of growing up issues he had with them before that.

As far as the vampire costume I fully support what everyone else said. Also as I learned from a reformed necromancer and pagan who is now confirmed in the Catholic church - it wasn’t until he realized that Holy water burned and he could not do harm to someone who had true faith in Christ that he knew he was playing for the “wrong team.” Demons are scary because we give them power through fear. When we embrace Christ and yes, even sometimes such as Halloween mock them by dressing up in ridiculous costumes and going door-to-door for candy and calling it “cute” we take away that power and give much more power to the “right team.” But that is just another perspective on it. Take care.

God bless.

 

[megaji]

I’m sorry, but if you are making a teenage boy choose between his mother and his girlfriend, his hormones aren’t going to let you win.

Aside from that, I don’t see what’s so wrong with Vampires. They are just monsters. I happen to like Vampires. It’s just harmless fun, and there’s not much sense in taking that from your kid. Let him have a nice time with his girlfriend. If you do, he’ll surely like you more than if you don’t.

 

[joandarc2008]

I’m sorry, but if you are making a teenage boy choose between his mother and his girlfriend, his hormones aren’t going to let you win.

Aside from that, I don’t see what’s so wrong with Vampires. They are just monsters. I happen to like Vampires. It’s just harmless fun, and there’s not much sense in taking that from your kid. Let him have a nice time with his girlfriend. If you do, he’ll surely like you more than if you don’t.

While this was somewhat the point I was trying to make I think that worrying about whether your children “like” you is what has gotten our society into too much trouble. Now granted I am not a parent I am a step parent to be but I think too many parents are too worried about “being a friend” than enforcing discipline. What the OP originally posted I truly believe is out of love and she is trying to do the right thing but I also just wanted to caution her about battling over her son with girls (as chances are the high school romances aren’t the ones that they marry although there are excpetions). You see my df and I own a martial arts business and we have a unique perspective on hearing how many parents pay good money not for the love of the arts but to bring their children in to “teach them some discipline.” 9 times out of ten it is that the children are not used to getting told no and have learned that their parents want to “be their friend.” Children are smarter than we give them credit for - they will manipulate that and push it to get what they want. That is the human side of free will before the more mature side, spirituality, sets in. Take care and God bless,