When I was a kid, Halloween was one of my favorite days of the year. My mom always worked hard to make sure that we had fun costumes with elaborate hair styles, make-up, and props. We got to stay up past our bedtime and eat tons of candy. Mikeala and all four of our biological kids have always enjoyed Halloween for many of these same reasons. But the elements that make Halloween so much fun for most kids can make it a really difficult day for kids with special needs or a history of trauma. Isabelle and Jonathan have always struggled when life strays too far from our normal routine. Hallie has sensory issues that make it difficult for her to wear many types of costume pieces. For the first couple of years, they didn’t have any concept of the characters that they are pretending to be, and they didn’t really understand the point of it all. This has gotten a bit better for them each year that they have been home, and this year was the first in a long time that I think everyone in the family enjoyed Halloween without any extra stress.
For just over a year our kids have enjoyed the DC Superhero Girls cartoons, and this year all five girls decided to dress up like characters from that show. We love the fact that Isabelle and Hallie are catching up in their development enough that all five girls can enjoy things together now. We weren’t sure that would ever happen. Jonathan still doesn’t have any characters that he is attached to yet, so we decided to dress him up as Robin to fit in with the super hero theme. He didn’t exactly understand the costume, but he did understand that he was doing the same thing as all the other kids, and he loved that. Being like the other kids has become important to him during the last few months. Three of his favorite things in the world are food, shiny paper, and being outside. So the idea of a holiday that involves being outside for an hour and a half while all diffferent people hand you food wrapped in shiny paper seems like a perfect plan to him. He was prettty much in heaven the whole time.
Hallie chose her own costume for the first time this year. She wanted to be Katana. (Or Kiki-tana, as she calls her). The character wears a white mask over the top part of her face, and the costume came with a light foam mask. Hallie told me right away that she would not wear a mask. That wasn’t a surprise to us at all. Her sensory issues make it really hard for her to wear things on her face. I asked her if she wanted me to get paint for her face instead. At first she told me no, but then started asking questions about the paint. Hallie is still not very verbal, so the questions were a combination of words, signs, gestures, and grunts, but she got her point across. How much of her face would be covered? What would I use to put the paint on? Could she feel it? What would the paint look like. After she asked all her questions, she told me that she did want me to get some paint for her. During the days leading up to Halloween, she reviewed the plan several times. One part of her face would be white. One circle of red. And each time she told me that yes, she did want her face painted.
