So, I bought Emily’s Halloween costume a month early. This was under the assumption that it would give her lots of time to see it, get comfortable with it, so that come Halloween she wasn’t afraid of it and refusing to put it on. Well after 3 weeks of her absolute refusal to put it on, I felt that we were running out of time. I did the exact thing I hoped to avoid and forced it onto my crying child.

She hated it at first. But then we gave her the pumpkin to hold, and had her do a practice at the door, where we gave her a pack of Smarties – “Treat”. That’s pretty much all it took and she was happy to continue wearing the the duck suit. Success!