Like everything in life, all good things must come to an end. For high school students on the verge of adulthood, trick-or-treating on Halloween is no longer acceptable.

Opening your door on Halloween eve, expecting to greet a Disney costumed child, only to be confronted by an awkward teenager lunging for your candy bowl, is a uncomfortable disappointment.

Halloween is an opportunity for children to enjoy dressing up and taking an adventurous journey through they neighborhood. It is one of their only opportunities to take on the identity of characters they aspire to be before they become jaded by young-adulthood.

For one night, kids can dress up as a princess or a Power Ranger without feeling self-conscious. But as children make the transition into adulthood, their dreams of becoming Hannah Montana and Jacob Sartorious fade away.

Those aspiration are apparently replaced with a singular greed for candy as children age into their teen years.

These teenagers, bent on gobbling up all the candy, are now clogging the sidewalks and creating an additional concern for parents whose small children should be skipping through residential neighborhoods worry-free.  Roaming hoards of sugar addicted teens are ruining the opportunity for younger kinds to establish fond memories.

The streets of Burton Valley in Lafayette, more specifically Merriewood Drive, is a  popular spot for trick-or-treaters.

A local neighborhood near an elementary school should be the safest location for their children to enjoy the Halloween tradition. However, Merriewood Drive no longer offers such a idilic setting.

Often times police cars are parked on the street with cops directing the endless crowds away from oncoming cars. Screams fill the air. Not the high pitched shrills from toddlers, but the cracking and pitchy voice of a teenager terrorizing the neighborhood and ripping candy from the buckets of innocent children.

A few years ago, before I retired from my days of trick-or-treating, I was with my parents and was horrified when an adolescent around the age of 16 slipped several pieces of candy out of my basket and ran away screaming.

Teens should be banned from walking Lamorinda neighborhoods during Halloween eve.

Sure, there are rare cases when those between the tween and teen ages genuinely have the passion for the trick-or-treating, but far more of them are bent on ruining the night for their diminutive counterparts.

Instead, there are plenty of other activities that they can participate in when Halloween comes around each year. For example, they can go to a local Halloween party, cause mischief with their hooligan friends, or make Musical.lys in their bedrooms, as a person of that age should.

The best way to prevent traumatizing Halloweens for young children can be achieved by refusing to give candy to the teens that show up to you door. Simply close the door, and alert the local authorities when you hear disruptive noises from adolescents that could traumatize young children.