Parents need to slowly build up their children’s experience with trick-or-treating before finally letting them out on their own, according to a parenting expert.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, author and parenting consultant Gill Hines said there is no set age for letting a child out on their own on Halloween.

She said parents need to teach their children how to behave year by year before making a judgement call.

“You can’t really put a time or a date on it,” she said. “You can’t say this age or that age.”

“Some of them are daft as a brush at 12 and some of them are really sensible at eight.

“It’s really about, when is your child ready?”

Ms Hines said children need to be taught trick-or-treating gradually over time.

“For me, it’s about starting them off at five and holding their hand, knocking on the door yourself and getting them to say, 'Trick or treat' so they are learning how to do it,” she said.

“Gradually over time, you back off and back off and back off.

“You stand at the gate the next year and you let them go and knock on the door themselves and the year after that, you stand a few houses back and watch them and so on.

“You gradually get them to the point where they know how to do it, they know how to be polite and they know that you’re there.

“Then when you know that your child is sensible to go themselves with a group of others and to do this, then that is when you let them go.

“So, it could be 10, it could be 12, it could be nine, it could be seven.”

Nathan Hanley Stewart (5) and his little sister Sophie (3) stand near Halloween bonfires in the Crumlin area of Dublin, 31-10-2011. Image: Mark Stedman/RollingNews

Ms Hines said road safety should be among the biggest Halloween worry for parents.

“Again, it is knowing your child,” she said.

“Knowing they understand the risks, knowing that you’ve taken them out many times and you’ve done the roads with them.

“These days there’s an awful lot of driving around in cars or going everywhere in a way that they don’t have to make those decisions.

“So again, it is about taking them out for a walk around, making sure that they understand the roads and doing it with them again and again and again.”

Pictured is Jinpa the Red Panda getting into the spirit of Halloween at Dublin Zoo

Ms Hines said the best way for children to trick-or-treat is in groups of different ages – with older children then more likely to step up and show responsibility for the younger ones.

She said parents nowadays ‘mollycoddle’ their children too much.

“We do that something awful and it is having its effect,” she said.

“You know we’ve never seen anxiety rates among kids the way they are now and it is making kids very anxious.

“What we have got to help children do is stand on their own two feet and feel confident doing it, because the job of a parent is to grow your child up.”

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