sensory issues and Halloween

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My son hates the smell and feel pf pumpkin innards, so we just decorated a pumpkin with stick-on shapes from the Dollar Tree. You can also find them (though rather less cheaply) at orientaltrading.com. He did a very cool one-eyed face.

The carve-able fake pumpkins are fun, too, although some brands carry a smell that might be offensive in a different way.

Haven't seen those, will have to keep an eye out.

You can also paint pumpkins - not sure with what kind of paint, but they do it at school.

We don't have a sensory issue to deal with, I just don't think all the work is worth it - since after carving they last such a short time. We have several lit fake pumpkins and then we buy LOTS of real pumpkins in different shapes, colors and sizes. We never carve these. After Halloween, we remove the fake carved pumpkins and leave the beautiful whole uncarved pumpkins all the way through Thanksgiving.

When DS wants to carve, we will carve one, the night before Halloween. Although, some years we don't do one at all.

My son doesn't do pumkin guts either, so I do the cleaning. He usually draws the face he wants cut, then I clean it out. Sometimes he will cut out the face, but usually I do most of it. He seems to be happy w/ this set up.

Other halloween issues - nothing on his face. One year he wore paint, but only once. No masks or anything like that. He tries to wear them on his head, but then it gets uncomfortable and takes it off.

I love halloween!!

Uncomfortable costumes are always a problem, especially since he usually wants to be something out of the ordinary. This year he wants to be a Mockingbird. My husband is officially in charge of costuming.

My sons did pumpkin guts for the first time ever last year, up until that point just the sight would send them running from the room gagging. I don't know what changed last year, but they just got in there and wen to town! L did wash his hands approximately 7 million times.

This year they both want to be zombies but are worried about the face paint. So we are going to do a test sometimes in the next couple of weeks to see if it's bearable for them.

Annotated Alice - When we did zombies in the past, we raided my makeup instead of using face paint. It is much less itchy!

I think that we needed some white, but I blended it with moisturizer so it wen on really thin. then we used gray eye shadow and eyeliner.

The face paint for costumes is so thick and itchy - my boys wouldn't have it.

Henry missed Halloween last year. He was sacked out on the couch with H1N1 flu, but the year before, when he was 3 was really hard. People who put scary displays in their yard forget about the little ones - we'll try to skip those, but people walking by with scary masks wasn't fun either.

Pumpkin guts - we'll see how it goes.

I see fake carvable pumpkins at craft store chains like Michaels and Hobby Lobby a lot this time of year. My mum and I painted pumpkins instead of carving them one year. We used bottled acrylic paint. I think the speffic brand was Apple Barrel. I use this the most on my My Little Pony customs and I'm pretty sure it's the same brand we used to paint pumpkins that year. You can find it at Michaels and Hobby Lobby as well and at some Walmarts.

I hated Halloween as a kid and trick or treating always ended in a meltdown because a lot of people used gory decorations that looked liked something from an R rated horrar flick and let's just say motion activated displays were not my idea of funny or cool. My trick or treating excersions often ended by the time I set off just one of those.

This is a great tip! Thank you.

It;s not the pumpkins that cause him problems it's the way they start to look when they're lighted and the face distorts that bothers Ryan. He won't look at it the next day so we throw them out. I just went to the pumpkin patch here and bought 8 pumpkins. He loves to pick the designs and we have teens friends help us carve.
BTW the innards make me ill myself. UGH

Wow, the topic of this post really caught my attention... even though it was about pumpkin guts, my 7yo Aspie daughter has major Halloween issues of another sort! She is TERRIFIED of anything even remotely halloween-ish! I mean, even little kiddie songs on Nick Jr about Halloween, or carnival haunted houses terrify her. And at school she would cry so much in music class when they sang Halloween songs (every year!), that finally they allowed her to sit out music classes during the month of October and take art classes instead... which I am fine with, because she is obsessed with making art.

In terms of the touch-sensitivity issues about the pumpkin guts, she has a similar issue... she will CRY if I don't let her crack the eggs when I'm baking or making breakfast. She loves cracking them, but then hates getting them on her hands so much that she sometimes drops the shells immediately into the bowl or cracks it too hastily and leaves shell pieces in there. Then she runs off to wash her hands, complaining about how awful it feels. It's so annoying! LOL. I wish she would make up her mind... either crack them, or don't! But I do like to let her help out in the kitchen.

People used to use turnips instead of pumpkins.

Saraji, your daughter sounds lovely. It's nice to have a sensitive child, rather than one who revels in goriness. You might not realise it yet, but your girl has a tender heart in the making. You must be puzzled but proud. Well, that describes how I feel about my son at times.

Don't know if it was sensory or not, but my son freaked out when we tried to make him a zombie soccer player for the fall festival. We didn't have a costume and needed something quick. He was already dressed for soccer practice. I told him I could use a little black eyeshadow around his eyes and muss up his hair and he'd look great. Dad thought it was a great idea too. Son was not so sure. Asked him to give it a try. He did let me try it. He looked GREAT. With the hair messed up, he looked like a young Rob Patterson. The eyes took about 30 seconds and looked great. He freaked. BIG time. Had to wash off the eye shadow and brush his hair. He didn't want the hair messed up and didn't want anything on his face. Bummer. I wish we'd been able to get a picture.

THEN, he tells me he wants to be a cowboy. LOL, I promised him I'd make a cowboy outfit for halloween. It turned out great and he was so happy, especially about the cap gun I brought out from storage. Now we have a bit of a gun obsession... (uh oh...)

Yes my DD is very sensitive! I was too as a child... we are a lot alike.

I always wondered if turnips would stink worse than pumpkins... lol.