Mildly Infuriating

I took my kids out, one is almost 3 and the other is just over a year. So few houses in our neighborhood had ANY appearance of anyone home, let alone participating that it took nearly two hours to get about 15 houses. In a pretty standard suburb. At least two houses that were heavily decorated had nobody home and no bowl out. Two also had colorful lights but when we knocks on the door they looked confused when there were two toddlers yelling at them. One just shut the door in our face and the other sort of stood there for a minute with his mouth agape and finally said “I don’t have anything”. I mentioned to that guy that he MIGHT want to turn his lights off or there would be kids all night, but walking past at the end of our evening, all his lights were on still.

I left a bowl on my porch and had two small groups of respectful kids each take a couple pieces each (video doorbells have changed the game a little).

One of the houses this year had a couple of signs that led you to "knock three times" on the door. It was pretty fun for the kids.

I took my kids trick or treating tonight and, in the neighborhood we go to, everyone who is handing out candy sits on their porch or driveway and it's like a big block party. Nobody goes up to the houses with nobody outside because it's assumed they aren't participating. Being in rural texas, I probably wouldn't let my kids knock on those doors, only if that's what was the norm for the neighborhood. People be crazy out here.

It is because all you had was those weird black and orange taffies. No-one can eat those.

Maybe meet them half way and sit on the porch and hand out candy? I used to go to my parent's house to help them hand out candy and I noticed it took a bit of effort for the smaller kids climb the stairs. There's no railing and knowing how dangerously slick their steps got if they were damp, i started sitting at the bottom to hand out candy.

It seems trick or treating isn't as popular with the kids as it used to be. Ironically, it seems more popular than ever with adults. Some houses I've seen look like they must rent a storage unit to keep all the decorations they put up. We used to fill a set of dad's old clothes with leaves, splap a plastic punkin on top for a head and call it a day

I left a bowl of candy out once, and some teen boys took the whole bowl.

We just finished. We were 0-10 on knocking on doors. Eventually they gave up and kept on trucking.

You gotta be outside chilling shooting the shit with neighbors at the end of your driveway these days. My door would fall off the hinges if I had to open it for every kid

That's honestly pretty sad. If they don't want candy so be it. Eventually someone will knock.

This probably varies significantly place-to-place, all the kids in my neighborhood this year rang my doorbell fine.

what ours changed to is we'd sit on the porch. we live in a nice warm climate so it doesn't make much difference if we sit in or outside, but the older kids know if your porch light is on, you can knock. If it's off, go away.

Most of our neighborhood sits outside with the candy and to hang out and see everyone's costumes. They make it very obvious they're handing out candy so when it's knock houses, we're less likely to go

When people have moved to leaving candy out, perhaps kids thought that not having them out means you're not participating. Also, when many houses have left them out, for efficiency, it makes sense to only go to those houses.

I'm glad to hear that the sign helped. Shows that some kids aren't just about getting as much candy as possible but also having a bit of fun.

I would be mad if some kids would come begging for my candy. MY CANDY! yes I'm fat.

I live at the end of a cul de sac with a bunch of killjoys who never give out candy, so kids wouldn't visit my house.

So I take my bucket of candy and go walking around and deliver it to the kids. Plus this means everybody sees my costume.

We only had one group visiting on Halloween. But that's due to a decline of Halloween in general in this area - the fad is over. Here it basically started when our kids were young, and there were maybe five to ten groups coming through. But after a few years, it simply declined.

I still buy some sweets - I don't want to disappoint kids - but whatever is left goes into the sweets bowl at work.

I took my kids last night and every house had people sitting on the porch with a bowl. None of the houses they knocked on opened the door. There were hundreds of kids around us and I didn’t hear anyone say trick or treat.