‘Today’s Dylan Dreyer Details Feeling Mom Guilt About Kids’ Halloween Activities

With Halloween fast approaching, Dylan Dreyer is opening up about what she loves and hates about the spooky season.

Dreyer talked all things Halloween on the Wednesday, October 7, episode of The Parent Chat podcast, including the parenting struggles she faces this time of year. “What stresses me out about Halloween is all the thought that needs to go into it,” she explained. “But I’m learning, especially through the podcast, a lot about myself is that everything stresses me out because there’s always the next thing to think of. And that’s just what we signed up for.”

For Dreyer, one Halloween hardship is balancing her role on NBC‘s Today with her kids’ festivities, especially their school Halloween parades. (Dreyer shares her three sons — Calvin, Oliver, and Rusty — with her estranged husband, Brian Fichera.)

“It’s really sweet, but it happens at 9 o’clock in the morning. I’m literally on the Today show at 9 o’clock in the morning, so I would have to take off for Halloween,” she said. “And Halloween here at the Today show is literally my favorite day of the year. We go all out for Halloween, and I love it every single year, so I can’t take off work, obviously, to go to my kids’ Halloween parade. So, I feel a little guilty that I miss out on that.”

The Today hosts are known for dressing in fun, elaborate costumes for the show’s annual Halloween episode. Last year, Dreyer transformed into Frankie Valli and lip-synced to The Four Seasons hit “Walk Like a Man.” She even shared a sweet Instagram video of her sons helping her rehearse her performance.

 

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Another of Dreyer’s Halloween stressors is the concept of boo bags. “Little kids leave little packages of treats on your front door, and they ring your doorbell. And your child then has to answer the door and run around to try and find the kid, and they hop back in the car and pull away,” she stated. “So, you don’t want to get caught dropping off a boo bag, and the person who receives the boo bag wants to catch the person. It’s a fun little game. This should be a happy thing. This should be something I want to do, and it’s like the one thing I don’t want to do.”

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Dreyer continued, “I don’t want to pack up little baggies of more stuff, more candy, more plastic toys. I just don’t feel like doing it, but my kids want it so bad. They all last year asked, ‘Can we do boo bags? Can we do boo bags?’”

Dreyer joked that she “played dumb” and pretended not to know what boo bags were last year after her family moved to the suburbs, but admitted she feels pressured to participate in the trend this year.

Beyond figuring out trick-or-treating plans and attending Halloween parties, Dreyer says her boys still haven’t picked out their costumes.

“If Halloween is supposed to be this one day that’s all about the kids dressing up in costume, when did it get so out of control?” she asked her podcast listeners. “Has it become too much, between the parades and the boo bags and the trunk-or-treats and all the other things? Is it just too much, or is this what the kids want?”

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