13 Things That Prove Halloween Is a Waking Nightmare For Parents

Updated on Oct 30, 2016 at 1:22 PM

POPSUGAR Photography | Arturo Torres

Halloween might be your child's all-time favorite holiday, but for you, it's a literal nightmare. The same aspects your kids love about trick-or-treating – the candy, the costumes, the candlelit jack-o'-lanterns — are precisely those things that keep you up at night in a constant state of anxiety.

Parents, we feel your pain. We know you aren't the only one who spent 45 minutes getting your toddler into that cardboard Millennium Falcon costume only for him to announce he has to pee the second you finish. We know you too have dreaded the incessant doorbell-ringing those years you had a newborn "sleeping." And we surely know the struggles that come with your love-hate relationship with a giant pile of candy.

For proof, here are just a selection of things we, too, will be freaking out about while pretending to love every minute of the Halloween season.

Feeling Inadequate by Your Level of Halloween Spirit

And by the looks of your neighbor's Fall-themed front porch, the Pinterest-shaming starts in early September.

Spending 75+ hours hand-crafting a DIY costume only to have them want something completely different the day of Halloween.

Their pouty, verging-on-meltdown faces in photos will make for some really great family memories some day.

Having neighbors who've turned their yard into a terrifying graveyard that gives your kid panic attacks for a month straight.

Or maybe that house is just actually haunted?

Accurately predicting the emergency room fees you'll incur from whatever pumpkin carving accident is about to take place.

Whether it's you or one of the kids, someone is definitely stabbing themselves with that bendy-yet-piercingly sharp miniature saw utensil.

The "is my kid about to touch a black recluse or just a plastic spider ring?" question.

At some point, you just give up and hope someone will have a venom antidote handy.

Worrying how much of your kids' trick-or-treating bounty is actually poison.

There's bound to be a razor blade in this pile somewhere, right?

Having to ration your kids' candy intake until you finally say "f*ck it" and just let them go to town.

It's a great goal to try to prevent childhood diabetes and cavities, but we get it: you're up against impossible odds.

Having to ration your kids' candy . . . with yourself.

No, it's cool. You didn't just spend all Summer losing those last 10 pounds to succumb to stealing your child's candy and secretly scarfing it all while hiding in your closet.

The overabundance of clowns.

You don't want to pass on your clown-fearing complex to your kids, but it's hard not to shriek at the sight of one.

Watching your hard work be ruined within five minutes.

You put the final touches onto their costume, take a moment to metaphorically pat yourself on the back, turn to grab your camera, and then look back to discover they've somehow ripped, stained, and smeared everything that could be ripped, stained, or smeared.

Being made to deal with kids who don’t even belong to you.

The middle-schooler who just grabbed two handfuls of candy from your bowl? The bratty tween who isn't even wearing a costume and asking if these full-size chocolate bars are the only options? The toddler who just vomited from a sugar overdose on your front porch? Yeah, there's nothing you can do about any of it.

People in masks walking in close proximity to your children.

A fellow trick-or-treater or a deranged child-kidnapper who can now hide in plain sight?

Having to pretend you're not home because you forgot to stock up on candy.

Better to sit silently in the dark until sunrise than be the person on the block handing out carrot sticks and loose change.