Betwixt and Between
All Trick and no Treat.
How else to judge a Halloween that came with a town recommendation insisting no tiny princesses or pint-sized dragons should parade down our street? A Pandemic directive nixed any chance that a wide-eyed Minnie Mouse or Action figure might toddle within reach.
Logically, I understood why happily giving out Snickers bars from my doorstep was discouraged. Still, my disappointment ran deep, as the dictate guaranteed that my all-time favorite part of the day would be a bust, too: hearing the clomp and commotion that signaled the arrival of the boys. Not just any boys, mind you. The ones with energy enough to light up ten jack-o-lanterns. The tween-age kind.
As a long-time fan of the antics of trick-or-treating boychicks, I marvel at how each year’s crop—kids roughly between the ages nine and twelve—seem like clones of the ones who preceded them: boys who travel in packs; boys who move like outsized puppies in their newly changing bodies.
They run, stumble, and finally bound to the porch, their boisterous laughter rendering any ring of the doorbell unnecessary. It occurs to me that this may be one of the last years some of them will appear in costume.
In accordance with custom, my behavior is predictable, too. As they yelp, Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!, their hands pawing for the candy bowl, I comment on their get-ups, using the same language they do to characterize the skeletons that hang all about the stoop and bushes. Awesome, I say.
Do they actually hear me? It’s hard to tell. These pups are all wiggle. Holding a container of treasure high as I open the screen door, I wait as they jostle for position. I assure them that there is enough candy for all, but I am not sure these words register, either. Then, it’s nose to the bowl. A flurry of digging. Pooch after pooch in search of just the right “bone.” How delighted they are to see that we have the super-size candy bars on offer.
These Halloween hand-offs are like “Snapchats”—those popular phone videos that capture a moment in time before the picture disappears. Openness is the image I see. Vulnerability. Twin reactions that some child psychologists describe as the “sweet-spot” of this stage of “tween” development. Emotions that burn bright in these, “the latency years,” but which, by adolescence, often grow faint.
Every year—decades of Halloweens if I count them up—my wish for these “betwixt and between” boys is the same: that they can preserve their capacity for expressing true feelings without perceiving themselves as weak. And yet, the research on the psychological challenges that boys face underscores why my wish may be just that. Fanciful thinking.
For example, in his groundbreaking book on boys’ inner emotional experiences (1999), William Pollock, Ph.D. described “a crisis.” As the century turned on its axis, another widely-respected book, Kindlon and Thompson’s Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys also argued for new models by which to raise these youth. Both works have since had a profound cultural impact on how we understand, shepherd, and connect with our boys.
Nevertheless, nearly twenty years later, Peggy Orenstein’s best-selling book, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity, reports that young males continue to struggle—in myriad ways—including their ability to voice what they feel.
In a recent vox.com interview, Orenstein offered a familiar warning: “Boys wrestle with the taboo of vulnerability—either rejecting it, embracing it, denying it, or capitulating to it. When we cut people off from their ability to acknowledge, recognize, and express emotion, and particularly vulnerability, we not only undermine their basic humanity but we take away the thing that is essential.”
The article’s message is that the mental health crisis for boys persists. So, is there hope that we can build up today’s boys who are on the cusp of becoming teens? Can we encourage them to express a wider range of emotions? The proliferation of programs, books and continued media awareness about their emotional situation suggests that we can. And of course, there are many of us—parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors—who all cheerlead the efforts to build up their self-esteem.
I admit I’m still pining for our lost Halloween: the vampire capes and the zombie attire. And I miss not having laughed with the kid who has the silly grin, unable to resist pushing for more: Can I have two? What about three? Still, there is next year, when hopefully there will be parading mice and Captain Americas again. In the gathering dusk, I will be on the look-out for litters of boy-pups, too. Eager for a Halloween that might once again be celebrated as all treat and no trick.
Best,
