My three kids are that old and disinterested.
One (Junior) is away at college, one (Everett) is a sophomore in high school, and one (Cam) is in sixth grade.
We bought some pumpkins but only after they went on sale at a local farm in late October. And only because I had Everett and Cam trapped in the car with me and unless they wanted to walk home, they had to go to the pumpkin patch with me.
Plop, the pumpkins went on the stoop. It's the first time in decades we didn't carve them.
These rite-of-passage moments are bittersweet. While I miss the family activities of yesteryear, I don't always miss the hidden labor. I don't miss bickering about young boys using knives on slippery pumpkins. I don't miss worrying they would lose a finger. The scooping of the pumpkin guts was satisfying and slimy, but scraping five pumpkins clean was...very slimy.
I still decorated for Halloween this year, but no one wanted to help. Instead I decorated against the audible rapid-fire spray of bullets in Fortnite and shouts to return to the lobby. When I suggested we play "Monster Mash" instead, they scoffed but assured me — "Yah, Mom, it's totally spooky" — that they still loved the lit skull in the bookcase.
Instead of Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest and Room on the Broom we watched Godzilla. Then Chuck and I fell asleep to the audible rapid-fire spray of bullets in Fortnite.
I also attended what will be the very last school Halloween parade for any of my kids. Watching the first graders against the sixth, I marveled at how giant Cam seemed in comparison. I knew he was glad I was there, but gone were the grandiose waves and beaming smiles for photos. Instead he breezed by me with his friends and gave me a cool wave over his shoulder.
This is the transition time — the time when everything that happens in your kids' lives is completely age appropriate but it still kind of breaks your heart.
It's the time of insteads.
And it's just the way it goes.
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