My youngest wasn’t allowed on kiddie rides by the time he was 5, because he was too tall.
It hurt to be left out through no fault of his own.
I’m glad none of the neighbors denied him candy on Halloween.
I’d rather err on the side of mercy, and I’d rather have big kids acting like kids than out drinking or causing mischief.
It’s just candy.
My gate is 5’ tall. That is plenty tall enough to stop acting like a child. Sorry, but I think Halloween is fine for little kids. Teenagers need to break with childhood at some point, so why not give them a defined boundary? Ancient cultures used to have a ceremony where teenagers would have to destroy their toys in a ritualistic ceremony before they would be considered adults. It’s time we do that too. The extended childhood we seem so lenient about needs to stop. Look at what it has produced. “Children” the age of 26 still on their parents health insurance! When I lived in California, we would have these gangs of kids show up at the door on Halloween-no costumes, not even a treat bag-and some of these boys may have been 13 or 14, but they were 6’2” and could have easily pushed the door down and taken whatever they wanted. That’s when I decided I’d had enough of the teenagers at Halloween. They were also the ones who showed up later...between 8-10pm. So I started turning the lights out at 7pm.