Trick or Treating with Colin

Halloween has always been a difficult holiday for us because although Colin loves dressing up in a costume, being in a parade, and giving out candy to people at our house, going out and trick or treating is filled with a lot of anxiety for him. Every year we are optimistic that it will be better for him, but each time we find that it's really not any different than the year before. We thought that maybe this year would be a bit smoother because he handled "scary" costumes much better at the parties we went to but we found that the moment we left the house, his difficulty started.

To an outsider, it may have looked as though Colin was just "having a tantrum" because of something related to candy or trick or treating, but in reality, he was really struggling with Cody and Kailey not doing exactly what he wanted them to do (stay close by, not run, not yell, not go up to someone's door, etc.) and he was anxious over things we still can't even quite pinpoint. The thing is, he doesn't even eat candy but we still want the tradition to be as normal as possible for him. He made it up to the door of a few houses on our street but then he kept getting worse and worse, crying and then asking to go home. We're not even sure exactly what the problem was, but he had his nervous face on and was so clearly uncomfortable that I just felt really bad for him.

At the top of our street we finally decided to just let him go home with Chris and so they walked back together. I actually got a bit emotional myself because when we separated, Colin looked so sad like he wanted to stay together but not really sure why he was even feeling what he was feeling. I think that for Colin, because he has some difficulty with not knowing what to expect in certain situations, he gets really uncomfortable and then his behavior starts to change because he doesn't know how to deal with he anxiety of the situation. Even today we saw a residual of Halloween (despite going to bed normal time) with his being tired/worn out and really emotional.

Kailey and Cody enjoyed themselves so we continued on for a little bit for returning home. Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you talk about trick or treating, he still just can't seem to get comfortable with it.