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Jessie, age 6, was excited. Dressed in full Thor regalia, his pretend Uru hammer in hand, he screamed, “I am an Avenger! Avengers assemble!” He had just flown in through the neighborhood cul-de-sac with his companion, Black Widow (AKA his sister), and found plenty of golden loot to take home. It was Halloween.

However, when Jessie awoke the next morning, his spoils of war were gone. Looking to great Odin for assistance (played by dad, of course), Jessie froze when his father apologetically said, “My dear Thor, I have eaten all your candy! I am so sorry!” Jessie’s eyes well with tears and he falls to the floor, wailing with disbelief, anger, and betrayal. Odin laughs.

“Hey Jimmy Kimmel, I told my kids I ate all their Halloween candy” is a recurring segment in which the late-night television host encourages viewers to videotape their child’s reaction to telling them all their Halloween candy is gone. Every year, thousands of parents film their kid’s reactions and post them on YouTube. Some cry, others yell, some hit. His audience laughs as Kimmel remarks how children respond to “betrayal” by their parents.

A harmless joke? Perhaps from an adult’s perspective, but not necessarily from that of the young child. To the pre-adolescent or adolescent, the “trick” of “trick or treat” may be met with eye-rolling, smiles, or even laughter. However, at age 6, Jessie doesn’t understand the aim of the joke, why his caregiver would betray his trust, or that the point of lying to him was to see his reaction. Parents understandably may forget the difference between the cognitive development of young children and their older siblings.

Creating Trust

Young children learn how to trust their environment’s safety from important figures in their lives, particularly parents and caretakers. Whether it is simply seeing if a room in a house is safe to explore as a toddler, or confiding in a parent about a tough day in school, children use parents to gauge if their world is safe. Generally, the younger the child, the greater the need to support a sense of trust and safety. Laughing at a child’s attachment to candy can disrupt their imaginative life and secure experience. So while adults easily see Halloween candy as simply replaceable, to children like Jesse it is lost and irreplaceable gold.

Mental health professionals frequently see long-term effects of mild, moderate, and severe violations of trust and acts of humiliation. Variations of breaking trust range from simply not picking a kid up from an afterschool activity on time to more severe violations including physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by a family member.

More than a century ago, Freud wrote about the unconscious meaning of jokes. Parents pranking children can be understood as veiled expressions of hostility which sometimes can be deeply painful and influential to a child’s developing self esteem. This is especially so when the “joke” comes from someone important to the child.

Nevertheless, children can be resilient. Some have an inherent ability to withstand minor physical and emotional trauma. All children also need adversity such as conflict with friends or forgetting homework as experiences to teach them how to process difficult situations. However, inherent and learned resilience are not universal traits in children, and as stressors build, that resilience erodes.

Shannon and Kyle

Shannon is a 12-year-old girl living with both parents in a gated community. Born with no congenital issues, she is a top eighth-grade student. She lives in a neighborhood where crime rates are low. She has numerous friends, plays soccer, and talks openly to her mom about her day-to-day activities.

Kyle is a 7-year-old boy who, unknown to his family and doctors, has a learning disability. He lives in a single-parent, low-income household. Every day, he hears ambulance and police sirens while walking to school. His classroom is overcrowded, preventing him from getting the extra attention he needs; it is difficult to process all the information he receives. After school, he needs to get home quickly because mom tells him the neighborhood is unsafe after 5 pm. Mom, on the other hand, works two jobs and doesn’t see Kyle until 9 pm.

Kyle and Shannon have different backgrounds and are growing up in contrasting environments. Where Shannon has multiple avenues of support, Kyle is limited to one parent who isn’t present most of the day. Kyle also faces a frightening and untrustworthy environment.

While taking Halloween candy from a child like Shannon may be initially disruptive, her innate and learned resilience can withstand this disappointment, and she may even find humor in it.

In Kyle’s case, a disappointment coming from the one place he should feel protected and safe may be experienced as an immense violation of trust.

This issue is not black or white. We cannot argue that all adversity is dangerous, or that adversity is always necessary for child to grow. However, there are better ways to help children develop resilience without violating trust.

Trust is complex. The act of stealing a child’s candy to videotape their reaction may appear harmless, and even funny to some. Yet given the possible stress of the prank, parents should make a more informed decision whether to participate in this annual Halloween semi-ritual. Before playing a trick on your child, think about whether they will be devastated by the betrayal or will be able to see it as the “trick” in “trick or treat."

Ashvin Sood, MD, is a third-year general psychiatry resident at New York University Langone. He is a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) media committee and a recipient of the 2019 AACAP Educational Outreach Program award.

Timothy Rice, MD, is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is Director for Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai St. Luke's/West Site, and Chief of the Child and Child and Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatry Unit for the Mount Sinai Health System.

References

Strachey, J. (1960). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VIII (1905): Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, i-vi. The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, London.

Reprinted from Psychology Today