Podcast 68: Halloween Candy - Highs and Lows
Welcome to Parenting Decoded, a podcast for practical approaches to parenting. I’m Mary Eschen.
Halloween is fast approaching! In the US, we gather costumes for our kids, carve pumpkins and wear orange and black together. For lots of us it’s a fun holiday but for some of us it’s fun until the night of Halloween. We cringe at the thought that we are going to encourage our kids to go door-to-door asking neighbors and strangers for candy. Our kids run excitedly from house to house and shout with joy when they see their favorite candy bar or sour patch gummies newly thrown into their Trick or Treat bag. It’s like Christmas but all about candy. It’s scary and a nightmare for some of us!
In this podcast I want to throw out a few thoughts that can help turn this potential battle for control into some life lessons that our kids learn from.
How can we use our practical parenting skills to increase the fun and decrease the areas of conflict both before and after Trick or Treating? Let’s go over some ideas for LOVING LIMITS and boundaries, how to set up good CHOICES and maybe even teach some new MATH and NEGOTIATING skills while, in the end, maybe letting them fail so they can learn through love and empathy to make better decisions in the future.
Let’s get started.
1. LIMITS – First up, setting LOVING LIMITS. Talk up front about what your limits and boundaries are. Remember to state your limits in positive ways. Some ideas might sound like these:
a. We allow children to Trick or Treat after they’ve finished eating their dinner.
b. We Trick or Treat from 6pm to 7:30pm.
c. We allow kids to eat three pieces of candy per day.
d. We allow kids to participate in our Candy Buy Back Program for xxx dollars per pound of candy.
e. I allow kids to count and sort their candy until 8pm.
Setting these limits and communicating them before you even start your Trick or Treating can give you the ability when they start bugging you for more candy or more time to say: “And what did I say? Oh, we go out from 6pm – 7:30pm?” This allows you to have your kids repeat back to you what the Loving Limit was. Feel free to kindly say: “Nice try.” When they try to wear you down.
2. CHOICES – Next up, CHOICES, activate their brains by giving them as many choices as you can. Avoid making any decisions for them unless they involve safety. Here are some examples:
a. What’s the weather going to be like tonight? It seems pretty cold; would you like to wear some extra leggings under your costume or something extra on top like a coat or sweater?
b. Would you like to go on Main Street first or to Second Street?
c. Would you like to go to Sally’s neighborhood to trick-or-treat or to Amanda’s? (Remember that we’re only going to give choices we like! When they say they want to go to someone else’s neighborhood, you’d reply with something like: That neighborhood is nice but tonight it’s not one of the options, so sorry. Would you like to choose, or should Mommy choose?)
d. Would you like to keep your candy bag in the kitchen cabinet or in the pantry? (notice how “in their room or on the kitchen table” aren’t options since those aren’t choices I like).
3. Now, how about incorporating LEARNING SOME MATH SKILLS – when there’s a pile of anything in your home it’s time to use some math! Allocate some fun time to have them sort all their candy by different categories: types like candy bars vs. gummies vs. sticks; or chocolate vs. non-chocolate; or maybe into piles by brands M&Ms vs. Mars vs. Hershey’s vs. whatever. Have them count which candy they have the most of. How many unique candies there are? Have your kids come up with other categories using weird things like: how many have skeletons on them? how many are shaped like pumpkins? how many are blue? How many have cartoon characters on them? You can also have them calculate how many days of candy they will have if they eat two pieces a day vs. three pieces a day. For older kids, have them work out percentages of chocolate vs. non-chocolate.
4. Another skill can be teaching them the ART OF NEGOTIATION – another fun aspect of having all that candy is that some of the candy they won’t want! Perfect! Have them learn to negotiate! When their sibling has snickers bars, they don’t like maybe a one-to-one trade is the offer. However, if the sibling loves snickers too maybe your child offers three M&Ms for one snickers. Whatever the case, you might need to help them learn if you see unfair negotiations going on like a young mom I know whose older daughter is taking advantage of the younger one’s lack of experience. You may have to set up yourself as a trade depot to approve trades but, let them propose some! Another aspect of negotiation skills that might come into play is if you decide you want to buy the candy from them so there’s less for them to eat and rot their teeth. Ask them what a fair rate is. Let them try to convince you that certain candy is worth more than others rather than buying things by the pound. Let them play with that idea if they are in older elementary grades.
5. Lastly, LET THEM FAIL - allow kids to make some mistakes so they can set their own limits in the future. What am I talking about? We need to let them make some choices about their candy habits so they can learn good habits. In some families you let them eat as much candy as they can the night of Halloween. Some kids will eat so much they get sick which is hard but, the next Halloween will be better because they chose the path and learned it wasn’t worth going down again.
When I was a kid, we didn’t get candy very often, so I immediately learned to ration my candy, no one had to tell me that once my bag of candy was gone, it was gone. I could eat as much or little as I wanted but I chose to savor it. I have no memory of any of my siblings ever overeating their candy, but it was an option.
All these ideas are just fun thoughts as you head into this huge sugar bomb of a season. I know you’ll make it through. Bottomline, set up guidelines ahead of time to prevent as much whining and complaining about when and how much is gathered and consumed.
I’m here for you. My mission is to help parents feel supported and encouraged. It’s a journey and I’m happy to make your ride smoother. Lastly, I’d love to have you take a minute to rate this podcast and maybe even write a review.
