My kids are 14 and 15, and they're over trick-or-treating. I'm not.

"My two sons, now 14 and 15, used to love trick-or-treating. I didn't realize how much I loved going with them until they stopped wanting to go. This year, I'll be handing out candy on the front porch for the first time in 15 years. The saying "The days are long but the years are short" is never truer than when I'm looking back at Halloweens past."

"I'd "ooh" and "ahh" over the cute costumes and encourage the tired-looking parents to hang in there - as if I had any idea what it took to wrangle a toddler into an ill-fitting and itchy costume (one they wanted to wear!) or negotiate with a cranky preschooler who was up two hours past their bedtime as they bounced around the house in a sugar rush."

"Once we had two kids, Halloween became this big, exciting holiday that somehow felt like it was more for me than them - and yet it was still completely exhausting. My oldest son was only 10 months old on his first Halloween and I think he wore his Tigger costume for maybe an hour before he'd had enough of the holiday."

My two sons, now teenagers, once loved trick-or-treating, and I enjoyed accompanying them until they stopped wanting to go. This year marks the first time in 15 years that I will stay on the front porch and hand out candy. Before parenthood, I often sat alone handing out candy while my husband was deployed. I admired costumes and encouraged tired parents without understanding the work of managing small children on Halloween. Parenting revealed the fun and exhaustion of Halloween: infants in costumes, early evenings, parents claiming a candy tax, and school-age dreams of enormous candy bags that tiny legs could not carry.

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