How to make Halloween work for a PDA child

For many parents of children with pathological demand avoidance, holidays can quietly become one of the hardest times of year. The expectations are high, the sensory environment is intense, and the gap between what we imagined and what actually happens can feel enormous.

Here is what Halloween has looked like in our family, and what I have learned about letting a smaller version of the holiday count.

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I’m sitting on my dark front porch in the early hours of the morning, listening to cars drive by on their way to school, looking at the huge inflatable pumpkin in our front yard.

And I’m thinking about how different Halloween looks in our family than I once imagined.

Last year, my younger son William was deep in burnout. He was not leaving his room except to use the bathroom.

On Halloween, he could not even come downstairs to say hello to his grandparents who were handing out candy.

I remember standing in the hallway with a bag of candy in my hand, realizing:

“This is it. This is his whole Halloween.”

I brought the candy up to his bed so he could “celebrate,” and then went back downstairs feeling defeated and sad, even though I “knew better.”

Even after all these years of lowering demands and practicing non‑attachment, my brain was full of pictures of how Halloween was supposed to look.

This year, William led the charge with the Halloween decorations, and we picked out the huge inflatable pumpkin together. He is in that tenuous recovery stage and participating more, and this is where I have to keep letting go and recognize:

I still do not know if he will want to carve a pumpkin with us or how Halloween night will actually go. I do not know how long he will last trick‑or‑treating, or if saying “trick or treat” will feel possible this year.

But I do know our “celebration” already counts, even if none of that happens.

So much of the pain around holidays comes from our expectations as parents, not from what our children actually do or don’t do.

We tell ourselves a story of what should happen and how our children are supposed to show up.

Here is a different experiment for this year:

Deliberately lower the Halloween demands on them AND you.

Let smaller, easier things “count” as a real holiday, like:

🎃 Buying the pumpkin and letting it sit on the porch, even if no one ever carves it

🍩 Skipping the pumpkin patch and bringing home one cinnamon donut to “mark” the time of year

🍁 If they want to trick‑or‑treat, letting them go without a costume, giving them a piggy back ride between houses or pulling them in a wagon under a blanket regardless of age

🍬Lowering the demand on how many houses they “should” make it to, and having extra candy at home in case they feel disappointed by a smaller haul

👻 Or dropping all of it this year if it feels like too much; there are no rules

You can grieve the version of the holiday you thought you would have. You can also make room for the real and imperfect version you are living.

Sending you much love this spooky season.