Sexy Halloween costumes can be the scariest part of the holiday for parents.

When just last year you were chaperoning cute pirates and grinning ghosts door-to-door, its no wonder youre bewildered when your teen insists on wearing devil horns and little else.

But how do you react when your kid wants to go as something you dont think is appropriate?

Reflect on how you feel

Its understandable that parents would feel worried about how their kids will be seen throughout the night, especially those raising daughters.

Girls are constantly marketed and exposed to sexual objectification in all forms of media, the American Psychological Association Task Force reports. This can lead to mimicking what they see, associating their value as people with being sexually attractive, developing a warped outlook on sex, and/or feeling unhappy with their appearance. In North America, girls of colour especially Black girls are often sexualized by others far sooner than their white peers.

But before launching into a lecture, its important to sift between how you feel in the moment and social conditioning.