My Question of the Day: Your company has rewarded you, and several other employees, with an all-expenses-paid, five-day cruise. You’re very excited about going until you find out the dates. The cruise will be at the end of October going into the beginning of November. There is only one person you trust enough with whom you’ll leave your child(ren) for five days, but you and he/she have a difference of opinion on Halloween. You don’t allow your child(ren) to participate in the holiday, but he/she does allow his/her child(ren) to participate. He/she agrees to keep your child(ren) while you go on the cruise, but he/she has made it clear that his/her child(ren) will be going trick-or-treating, and he/she won’t be leaving your child(ren) home unsupervised while he/she takes his/her child(ren) out for the evening. What do you do?

My 2 Cents: If I have the option to take my child(ren) along at my own expense, I do that. If I don’t have the option to take my child(ren) with me, I sit down with him/her/them and go over again how we do things in our home. I let him/her/them know that he/she/they are only walking along with those going trick-or-treating, because that family recognizes Halloween. My child(ren) is/are not to participate in gathering candy or eating any candy gathered, nor is/are he/she/they to participate in any Halloween activities, like a party or the like.

Once I’ve had this talk with my child(ren), I have to trust him/her/them to follow my instructions. When I get back from my trip, I won’t even ask whether he/she/they followed my instructions, but I will make my instructions clear before I leave for my trip and before I leave him/her/them with the person I trust. I, also, trust this person to not try to coax my child(ren) into doing anything against my wishes.

It’s all about trust, I would say.

We can’t watch our children 24/7/365, so we have to educate them and then allow them to live. If our children do right, then they will reap the benefits. If our child do wrong, they will suffer the consequences.

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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

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ManofCivility You make these harder… I think I would have to forego the trip if I was that strong about my aversion to Halloween.

treschic67 i wouldnt go on the cruise. We DONT celebrate Halloween N i wouldnt go against our beliefs to go on a cruise

JoshDamage I go on the cruise. One year won’t hurt. we didn’t celebrate it growing up either but every now and then we did

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

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