Trick-or-treat

Halloween is a scary time — gory masks, haunted houses and four-year-olds with a death grip on a 10-pound bag of candy.

Terrifying.

I’m new at this whole Halloween with a child thing, so I’m curious how you moms out there handle it. To me, Halloween seems like a parent’s worse nightmare — your child is out at night, knocking on strangers’ doors and stuffing his or her face with sugar.

First, you’ve got the obvious safety issues of kids approaching strangers for treats when you’ve been warning them since the delivery room about “stranger danger.” Then, when they come home with their spoils you’ve got kids who will be eating candy before, during and after dinner for the next month.

So how do you handle the mommy terrors of Halloween? Do you have safety rules — do you even let your kids go out trick-or-treating? And what about the candy — do your kids get to keep and eat it all?