This mom was gearing up for a simple Halloween evening: costumes, candy, the usual kid chaos. Instead, her ex’s girlfriend showed up announcing that the children, ages five and three, were “grounded” and forbidden from trick-or-treating.

The alleged crimes? Not listening, making a pumpkin mess, and wiping their hands on a sofa—also known as “behaving like small children.”

With two tearful kids and zero clear explanation, she started questioning whether she really had to uphold someone else’s punishment on her night.

Wibta if I let my kids go trick or treating tonight

My children have come home from their dads home. He has them from Monday to this morning.

His gf of 7 months dropped them off at mine and told me they are grounded and are not allowed to go trick or treating tonight.

Now i have to enforce it. To show the kids we work as a united front. (Her words.)

I asked her what they have done to get grounded from trick or treating.

She said they weren’t listening yesterday at all to her and made a huge mess that could have been avoided.

As a result they are not allowed to go trick or treating. My children were crying their eyes out over this.

Oh dear.

I asked her exactly what they did and she said they weren’t listening and making a mess.

My children are 5 and 3. 5 year olds and have horribly short attention spans.

My 5-year-old can’t focus on a lot and you need to remind him like 10 times to brush his teeth. And he will lose his tooth brush when brushing even though sometimes it’s still in his mouth. Bless him. School is aware and we are waiting for a referral as they think he’s got ADHD.

My 3-year-old gets hyper-fixated on anything and everything. This can make it hard to distract or to move on to something different.

Like for example, she will sort LEGOs all out into colour and shapes and will do this for hours with no break. Then when you suggest it’s time to go to bed or have dinner, lunch, etc. she struggles to remove herself from the LEGOs that she’s so focused on.

Sounds like a normal 3-year-old.

Anyway his gf refused to explain to me what they had done wrong, so I told her I wouldn’t be doing this without a valid reason. I made sure my children were out of ear shot so they didn’t see me undermine her.

She’s gone back to my ex who’s saying I’ve no right to undermine them and should respect and continue with any punishment they give out.

I haven’t grounded them as they are young. I have a different method that they don’t do at their house, even though the children are at mine 90% of the time. Dad has them during half term or 1 weekend a month (sometimes two) depending on his job and shift he has.

Everyone’s different, right?

I told him he needs to tell me what they have done and he said they didn’t listen to his gf while doing the pumpkins and ended up getting gunk everywhere. Because they were playing with the inside of the pumpkin and didn’t wash their hands afterwards, and then ran into the living room and wiped their hands on the sofa because paw patrol came on the TV.

This doesn’t feel like a good enough excuse to not let children go trick or treating. Plus it’s my daughters first time going as she was sick last year.

Wibta if I just took them anyway?

She’s turning to Reddit to decide whether letting them go out in their costumes makes her the problem…or the only adult using common sense.

This person says absolutely NTA.

This person (a family therapist) thinks this is WILD.

And this person really feels for these poor kids.

When the punishment fits the pumpkins more than the crime, someone’s priorities might be a little hollow.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.