Taking Scare Out Of Halloween

'Parents' Magazine Editor Offers Remedies

(CBS)  Halloween can be a time for family fun, but it can also be frightening for children younger than 7, resulting in nightmares.

CBS News' Russ Mitchell spoke to Diane Dubrovner, senior editor of Parents magazine, to establish the do’s and don’t of dealing with kids’ dreadful dreams.

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The children most susceptible to Halloween nightmares are between 3 and 6, as their extremely vivid imaginations are set off by even the most unassuming costumes.

"It's very surprising for parents which characters children are afraid of," Dubrovner explains. "Clowns are very commonly scary because they are just larger than life, and even TV characters that are very familiar to them, when they see them so huge and so big."

"Anything that's out of the ordinary for them is just disrupting," he says.

To get children accustomed to the Halloween holiday, Dubrovner also suggests that parents bring their kids out during daylight hours.

"We're setting the clocks back on Saturday, so it's going to get dark earlier than usual," she says. "When it's light outside, nothing seems quite as scary as it does in the dark. And also, the bigger kids who are going to be wearing those really scary costumes are less likely to be out early."

Another strategy, says Dubrovner, is to involve kids in the hanging of Halloween ornaments.

"A lot of the house decorations can be very scary, particularly when it's dark," she says.

"If your child is involved with putting up the decorations and seeing that they are all pretend and [that] everyone's decorating their house,… when they see other ones that they’re unfamiliar with, they are more likely to believe that they are not real," she adds.

While she urges parents to take their children’s nightmares seriously, Dubrovner explains that too many inquiries may be detrimental.

"It’s probably not a good idea to ask them what they dreamed about. It's better just to hold them and say, 'It's OK; I'm here now,' until they calm down," she explains.

"And to say there is no such thing as ghosts or monsters is probably not going to work in the middle of the night," Dubrovner says. "It's better to give them physical proof that they don't exist.…Turn on the light, look under the bed together, shake out the bed sheets, turn over the pillow and say, 'Look, there's nothing here.'"