They don’t deserve such a harsh punishment.

Halloween is one of the most magical nights of your childhood, and for good reason! You get to wear a cool costume and acquire as much candy as humanly possible, and it only comes once a year! You only get a finite number of Halloweens where you’re emboldened to go trick-or-treating, so you don’t want to miss out on even one of them. When my sister was 12, she broke her arm mere days before Halloween, and that didn’t stop her from going trick-or-treating. She wasn’t going to let some misaligned bones get in the way of what was most certainly one of the last times she would go trick-or-treating. 

If a parent was going to take trick-or-treating away from their kids, those kids had better have done something actually inexcusable. They can be grounded the first week of November, but taking away the chance to celebrate Halloween is, in most cases, cruel and unusual punishment. At least it’s cruel and unusual punishment in the case of this family, and the step-mom-to-be, who thinks she knows what’s best for her boyfriend’s young children.