Halloween is a time when grown-ups dress up like chickens. Why? Well, chickens are different than humans, so people have been dressing up like them since there have been chickens. But if you’ve ever wondered whether you are dressing up as a chicken or one of the other animals that look like a chicken, this post is for you!

It’s also for kids who want to know more about why they might be feeling left out of the other kids’ costume party. If your child is a chicken and wants to know what to do next, then maybe you can help him or her with this post.

This post teaches you how to determine if your child has a chicken costume or if your child is actually a chicken. One way you can tell which it is is by looking at their personality and how they act in social situations. Let’s take a look at some of these characteristics:

Does your child:

1. Have trouble making friends?

2. Be upset when someone brushes against them?

3. Ask for treats before eating dinner?

4. Be shy around children their own age?

5. Have “chicken” concerns such as: “Why am I always alone?” or “I’m not getting any attention from my parents

I read once that it was easier to tell whether someone was a chicken or just dressed like one. A chicken costume is not an actual costume. It’s something you wear, but it doesn’t have wings and it can’t flap its legs.

Children don’t have permanent costumes, either. You’d have to give them wings or claws first. And there’s no point in giving a child a costume until you’re sure it’s going to be a chicken; only then should you dress it up in the costume, so that when people look at it they’ll see a chicken and say “Awwww.”

I had done this pedagogical thing with a friend of mine who thought her daughter was a chicken. She said that she would often put the girl in dresses, hoping for a more “normal” appearance, and then taking them off as soon as she was out of earshot. One day she looked at her daughter in a dress and said: “Is it just me, or does that look like a chicken?” When we met, my friend told me that her daughter had been going to school dressed in chicken costumes for over a year, and that no one had ever noticed. This was curious because it wasn’t clear why the child was dressing up as a chicken.

So my friend asked the mother if maybe she thought the girl was actually a chicken. The mother replied: “Well I mean… yes… but when my husband first saw her he didn’t know what to think.”

A child who dresses up like a chicken, or a parent who buys her a costume, is not necessarily a chicken. (A child dressed up as an Easter Bunny might be a bunny. And there have been some people in history who were both.) But parents and children can get very upset about the question.

The problem is that the idea of being a chicken is deeply ingrained in our culture. It’s part of what makes us human: we are genetically programmed to pick up on certain cues that indicate whether we’re safe from predators and we’re likely to survive to procreate again. Chicken costumes take advantage of this instinct, by making it harder for predators to tell if an actual chicken is present or just a costume.

The instinct is strong enough that even if the person wearing the costume isn’t convinced they are not actually a chicken, they’ll still think they look like one. Which makes them anxious that they do look like a chicken, which can also make them anxious they don’t look like one, which may make them anxious they look like one anyway, which can make them anxious they’re not acting like it and so on all the way down the line until, before you know it, you’ve got yourself a serious case of anxiety disorder.

The fact that a costume is silly has nothing to do with the fact that it is a costume. A chicken costume is just a costume. The fact that it’s funny or embarrassing is something else.

In other words, there’s no difference between dressing up for Halloween and dressing up for school. If you are dressing up for school, it’s probably not okay to get in trouble for it.

If your child is dressed as a chicken and gets in trouble, you should talk to the teacher about it and try to explain why your child dressed like a chicken and got in trouble. But if you’re the parent of a chicken, you don’t have anything to talk about with the teacher. The teacher doesn’t care if you dress up as Cincinnatus, or whether you are really Napoleon Bonaparte.

The book I’m thinking of is called Chicken Little by Maggie Mahood. I don’t remember the exact title, but it’s about a child who dresses up like a chicken to go trick-or-treating. The kids are way more interested in the costume than the real chicken. One day, when she’s dressed as a chicken and wearing a mask, some kids ask her if she’s a real chicken or if she just wears that costume for Halloween. She says no, but then she has to say it again because people keep asking her if she’s a real chicken.

It gets to the point where she can’t even go out trick-or-treating anymore because people keep pointing out that “she’s not really a chicken.” (Although now that I think about it, maybe that’s what she wants? It’s kind of sad.)

I have a friend who has the same name as me (and, I believe, my partner’s too) and I’ve picked up on it a few times at parties. People call out “Alexa!” and jump when they see me coming. They assume that I’m the one running the show. But that’s not always true . . .

It can be super-embarrassing to run into somebody you know by your name in public. It’s even worse if they look at you like you’re crazy. Or like they don’t understand what you’re saying. Or both. It’s not just because of their reactions, either: it can be hard to find someone who is willing to introduce themselves under their own name, especially to people they don’t know well.

On the other hand, having a name that sounds like someone else’s can be fun sometimes because it’s so unusual. And there are some advantages to having a socially awkward name that sounds very familiar: being tall and lanky at school wasn’t as intimidating as it would have been if I’d been short with short hair and glasses. And changing my name would have been impossible when I was little – but now that I live in the UK it seems like something that should be possible for everyone