Eley McAinsh from Parenting for Faith shares a few helpful articles that help parents tackle Halloween with their children.
Every year, Halloween comes around and for many parents and carers, it brings with it the same questions. What do we think about Halloween and how do we want our children to respond?
We have lots of stories from families about how they parent for faith at Halloween, along with articles to help parents and carers think this season through. We’ve listed some of these resources below – if you think they would be helpful, please do share them with your churches and networks. You can view our whole collection of Halloween articles on our website.
Exploring different responses to Halloween
There are so many ways we can respond to Halloween, from shutting the curtains and pretending we’re not home to opening wide our doors and taking our kids out into our neighbourhoods. This post explores some different approaches.
Talking to our kids about the devil
At some point, our kids will ask about the devil and it can feel difficult to know how to respond. Becky shares what she’s learned over the years.
Exploring ways to respond to trick or treaters
Often Halloween means that our neighbourhoods are full of trick-or-treaters. If you’d like to explore how to respond to trick-or-treaters, this post provides some ideas to get you started.
Dealing with the world’s view of the supernatural
In a world full of witches, zombies, monsters, the paranormal and the supernatural, how do we help our kids navigate this stuff healthily? It’s not a new problem – we see witches, demons and all sorts of supernatural stuff in scripture – and we can learn good lessons from scripture in how to deal with it.
Parenting for Faith podcast, Halloween episode
In this bonus episode, we explore:
- how to decide what you personally think about Halloween and how to explain that to your child
- how to find the right fit for your family and tailor your response to them
- how to engage or deal with films that talk about the afterlife (such as Disney’s ‘Coco’)
- how to help your children find comfort in the darkness with a sample chapter from Rachel’s book.
If you have any questions or would like any more information, you can contact Eley and the Parenting For Faith team at parentingforfaith@brf.org.uk.