Halloween safety worries lead to ‘trunk-or-treating’ [Chicago Tribune]

Oct. 31--On a glorious autumn Sunday afternoon, costumed kids raced from minivan to sedan to SUV, grabbing handfuls of candy, while the adults looked on indulgently.

It's called "trunk-or-treating," the latest slant on the annual Halloween ritual, designed to take Milk Duds and Snickers off the ominous streets and into the security of a church parking lot.

"We know everyone who is passing out the candy," said Susan Wold, children's ministry director at St. Matthew Church in Wheaton, where the event is in its second year. "People like that they don't have to keep their eyes on their kids every minute."

Similar holiday tailgating can be found from Arlington Heights to Tinley Park, but the mission to make Halloween as benign a holiday as possible has become a national obsession, fueled by "hyperparenting" and around-the-clock media that magnify every urban legend and fluke accident, no matter how statistically rare.

No one is exactly sure when Americans became scared of Halloween, but researchers who have studied the event said they found virtually no significant evidence of tainted treats or sinister adults preying on vulnerable children, while some of the real dangers of everyday life often get little attention.

Still, that hasn't stopped some elementary schools from banning costumes and sweets because "safety is a top priority." And in a relatively recent phenomenon, officials in numerous communities have cautioned parents to check the sex offender registry before going door to door.

In a study titled "How Safe Are Trick-or-Treaters? An Analysis of Child Sex Crime Rates on Halloween," researchers used a national database to survey crime reports of 30 states from 1997 to 2005. What they found: No increased risk.

"We almost called this paper 'Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,' because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day," said Elizabeth Letourneau of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Concern about poisoned candy and razor blades in apples gained traction in the early 1970s, according to Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware. But after studying 25 years of newspapers, he was unable to find a single substantiated story of a child being killed by a contaminated treat, he said.

In Detroit there was a report on Kevin Totson, who died after ingesting heroin supposedly hidden in his candy. Far less publicized was the follow-up story that the 5-year-old found the drug in a relative's home, Best said.

A similar tale circulated in Pasadena, Calif., in 1974, when Timothy O'Bryan, age 8, died after eating cyanide-laced Halloween treats. But a subsequent investigation revealed that the candy came from his dad, who had taken out a life insurance policy on his son.

At their root, these stories reflected the national mood at the time, Best said. "A war was going on. ... We had hippies and campus unrest. There was all this anxiety about losing the kids."

Even so, some people will never be convinced, Best said. "An urban legend is harder to kill than a vampire."

Lenore Skenazy, a Wilmette native and mother of two boys, ages 15 and 17, isn't surprised by the findings. Skenazy is an ardent advocate for childhood freedom -- whether it's bike-riding or teeter-tottering -- and ignited a firestorm six years ago when she allowed her then-9-year-old son to ride the New York City subway alone.

Since then she has argued against encasing kids in "bubble wrap" on the speakers circuit and with her Free-Range Kids blog .

Her sons started door-to-door candy collecting around fourth grade. When others would confront Skenazy with, "How can you let them go trick-or-treating at night?" she'd shoot back: "How can you let your kid go to your relatives'?" referring to evidence that the vast majority of kids who are molested are victimized by friends or family.

And when people would raise an eyebrow over her sons' costumes -- which often included some weaponry -- she'd have a ready retort for that, too. "If everyone who played with a gun became a criminal, why didn't everyone who played with blocks turn into an architect?"

She's all for bike helmets, seat belts and reflective gear, but not X-raying candy. "This holiday is about kids practicing being grown-ups," Skenazy said. "One night a year, they get to dress up and go out ... at night. They get to practice at being an adult, which is so rare in a time when we constantly do everything for our children."

That doesn't mean that there isn't some peril associated with the last day of October, but it has nothing to do with "stranger danger."

Four times as many pedestrian deaths occur on Halloween as any other day of the year, said Natalia Pane, author of the new book "The Worry Clock: A Parents Guide to Worrying Smarter About the Real Dangers to Your Child."

Pane, vice president for research at Child Trends, a Washington-based child research organization, can cite statistics authoritatively. But it wasn't until she was pregnant and cutting all the blind cords at home that she had an epiphany.

When her husband asked, "How many kids die by these things, anyway?" Pane started scrutinizing causes of death across childhood, so parents could focus their energy in a smarter, more data-driven way, she said.

The result? A 60-minute "worry clock" that shows how many "minutes" should be allocated to fretting over potential hazards from birth to age 19. Upon closer examination, it wasn't blind cords or electrical outlets that Pane needed to worry about; it was sleep. Suffocation deaths accounted for 30 minutes of the clock during the first year of life.

"I did co-sleeping with my children ... and when I look back, I did everything wrong," said Pane, whose children are now 6 and 8. "I didn't know about babies' wedging -- where they wedge their heads between the mattress and something else -- and how fatal it can be."

For adolescents, the clock looks very different. While parents might obsess about drugs, the more prevalent danger is teen driving, which accounts for 26 minutes.

Poison treats and child abductions did not register even 1 minute on the so-called worry clock for any age group.

This Halloween fear is an extreme manifestation of the day-to-day apprehension that has gripped new parents in the 21st century compared with earlier generations, said Stacey Fields, 33, of Wilmette.

"We just have so much more access to information now," said Fields, mother of a 2-year-old girl.

When Fields was stung by a bee recently, she wondered whether Hannah could suffer the same fate. "I thought I should get an EpiPen for the house, my purse, the glove compartment," she said, referring to the prescribed medical device that injects epinephrine to thwart an acute allergic reaction. Bees didn't make Pane's worry clock at all.

But when Fields polled her friends, instead of dismissing her concerns, they all responded with: "Where can I get an EpiPen?"

The statistics provide scant comfort to one Mokena mother, who has three children under age 10 and did not want to be named out of concern for her family's safety.

She planned to take her kids to a "trunk-or-treating" event instead of traditional trick-or-treating -- but she also has declined the school bus, sleepovers and grapes. Most recently she's added hot dogs to the list after seeing a report of a choking death at Wrigley Field last summer.

"Every time I get close to changing my mind about something, there's a story out there that convinces me I'm right," she said. "You just can't be too careful."

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