u/AgainforthrFirstTime

When Did Halloween Become More About Adults Than Children?
I ask with no hidden agenda. When did this happen?
Halloween used to mean watching Charlie Brown get a rock, then heading out with a pillowcase or a plastic pumpkin bucket. You might get loose candy, pennies, or a candy apple your parents made you throw away because someone might have put a pin in it.
Your plastic mask barely let you breathe. Its rubber band usually snapped before the night was over. Still, you wore it proudly. There were Snickers, Marathon bars, Three Musketeers, and Kit Kats waiting at the next house. Full size ones, if you were lucky.
Somewhere along the way, we began hearing that trick or treating was no longer safe. Maybe the dangers grew. Maybe the fear did. Either way, fewer children came to the door, while more adults put on costumes, planned parties, and went out in groups.
I have nothing against adults enjoying Halloween. I do wonder when the children stopped being at the center of it. Was it fear, commercialization, a change in parenting, or something else?
What do you think happened?
Darren Redmond, M.Ed.
The Darren Redmond Podcast
The Around the Ballpark Live Show and Podcast

The verbiage of my youth

Fuel the Potential

We would never expect a car to perform at its best without fuel. We would not blame the engine for struggling when the tank is empty. Yet every morning, children walk into classrooms and are asked to concentrate, solve problems, regulate emotions, retain information, and perform academically when some of them have not eaten.

That makes little sense to me.

I believe every school should provide breakfast and lunch to every student, free of charge. Not simply to children whose families meet a particular income threshold. Every child.

Food is not a reward for poverty. It is fuel for learning.

The research supports the basic principle. A systematic review published in Advances in Nutrition examined 45 studies and found that eating breakfast, compared with fasting, produced positive short term effects in areas of cognition including attention, executive function, and memory. Importantly, those benefits were more apparent among children who were undernourished.

There is also an uncomfortable part of this conversation that deserves some attention.

Resistance to universal school meals can sometimes carry subtle elements of classism and, because poverty and opportunity have never been distributed equally in America, racial inequity can intersect with that thinking as well. We should be careful about assuming that a child receiving something free has somehow failed to earn it, or that feeding children creates dependency.

A hungry eight year old did not create the economic circumstances of their household.

Universal meals also remove something we do not discuss enough: stigma. Research involving students has found that universal school meals can reduce the stigma associated with receiving school food while improving accessibility and supporting families.

When everyone eats, nobody has to be identified as the poor kid.

That matters.

If we expect the engine to perform, put fuel in the tank.

If we expect children to learn, give them the fuel necessary to do so.

This is where culture, positivity, accountability, and grace intersect. Accountability means expecting our young people to work hard. Grace means making certain they have a fair opportunity to do it. Positive culture means creating schools where receiving breakfast or lunch says absolutely nothing about a child’s economic status and everything about our collective commitment to their potential.

Feed the child. Educate the child. Challenge the child.

Then watch what that child may become.

Darren Redmond, M.Ed.
The Darren Redmond Podcast
The Around the Ballpark Podcast
#lathamcenters

You have been warned,
back in the day you put your fingers near grandma’s cigarette case at your own peril
That thing shut with the ferocity of an angry snapping turtle that you owed money to

Do not fool your self
Gamblers loved it, they stuck dimes in pay phones like it was a peep show

Fans loved it, no more having to wait for the weather report to end (look outside that’s the weather)
It launched ESPN and sports talk radio

Sports Phone
976-1313
#sportsphone

Innocent until proven guilty of course and never judge a book by its cover, but back in the 1970’s if I see Mr Whipple squeezing the Charmin while I am walking in my local Pathmark headed towards the Bosco, i’m going the other way

None of this laid back nonsense of 2026, back in the 1970’s America was on the move and did not have time to put a yummy sugary breakfast into a bowl

The box will do

“Hurry up, Land of the Lost is Starting!”

Happy Anniversary to my beautiful wife Jackie

A lot of great memories all started from a bottle of “Clearly Canadian” water

The best is yet to come

I Love You ❤️ 31 Years and counting!

#happyanniversary #weddingpictures #wife

As far as I can tell, there is no truth to the rumor that Doug and Emmy Joe’s conversation with Freddie the Frog prior to filming an episode of the New Zoo Review, went something like this,

“ Freddie, are you high?”
“No Why?”
“ Well your eyes are all glassy and you’re not wearing pants”

Little League was everything