Despite what we may have been taught to believe, Halloween is the highest holiday. There. I said it.

And if you are raising a queer kid, or a neurodivergent kid, or a kid who has ever looked at the gender aisle in a costume store and thought, “Well, that seems unnecessarily restrictive,” you may already know why. Halloween is one of the only days of the year when a kid can try on an entirely different version of themselves and nobody has to make it a federal case.

Different clothes. Different hair. Makeup. A cape. A mustache. A ball gown. Combat boots. Six pounds of eyeliner. Whatever. And for some queer people, especially those who grew up before anybody handed them a useful language for what they were feeling, Halloween was basically a dress rehearsal. Not always consciously. Sometimes you just knew that one costume felt a little more exciting than it probably should have.

And maybe twenty years later you went, “Ohhhhhhh.” Yeah. That was not entirely about Dracula. Gen X knows this.

We spent our childhoods with barely supervised access to Aqua Net, fishnets, horror movies, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and somehow some of us still grew up shocked that gender could be theatrical. Come onnnnnn!! Halloween has been giving people plausible deniability for decades.

And if your kid wants to try something this year that surprises you, you do not have to immediately turn it into a conversation about their entire identity. You can just let them try on the damn costume. They might be experimenting with gender. They might be experimenting with character. They might just think the boots are cool. You don’t need a diagnosis. You need a candy bucket.

And parents, please don’t be the person standing in the costume aisle saying, “Are you sure?” Of course they’re not sure. They’re twelve. They were sure they wanted to be Vault Dweller from Fallout three days ago. Halloween is literally built for trying things on. Your job can be as simple as handing over your credit card.

Now, for my neurodivergent families, we also need to discuss the other great Halloween tradition: Buying a gorgeous costume and discovering, right as your leaving to go trick-or-treating, that one scratchy seam has personally declared war on your child.

The costume is only a PART of the night. Cut the tag out. Wear pajamas underneath it. Take the mask off. Skip the face paint. Bring headphones. Let them trick-or-treat for fifteen minutes. Let them stay home and hand out candy. There is no Halloween committee coming to revoke your membership because somebody could not tolerate polyester. The goal is for your kid to have a good night. Not to successfully endure a costume.

And if that costume happens to let them experiment with a version of themselves they have not shown you before? Well … I’ve got some news for you. Sometimes Halloween is a dress rehearsal for a future baby gay. So maybe do not heckle the rehearsal. Take the picture. Buy the candy. Tell them they look fantastic. And let them have the night.

That’s all for now. For more, please visit rainbowrootsmedia.com. And don’t forget to take good care of yourself today.