The Halloween Hangover

Tooth decay? Pediatric obesity? Sleep deprived the next morning from all night trick-or-treating?  How are you going to handle the day after Halloween? How will you deal with the sudden abundance of sweets your children will drag home?

After you inspect the candy, to insure it’s safe, and maybe claim the best treats for yourself, you need a plan. On average, kids bring home two plus pounds of sugar, cocoa butter, corn syrup, hydrogenated palm oil, and many other things few of us can pronounce or identify. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no prohibitionist. I love Halloween. I’ve been known to shake down clients for Kit Kat bars and Peanut M&M’s well into mid-November. But there have to be some guidelines to handle the confectionery loot.

Here are a few great ideas:.

Out of Sight… Out of Stomach

It’s simple, but it helps: By keeping most of the candy out of visual range, many children won’t be as tempted to dive in and overeat. I know parents who set up rules, before their kids don costumes. They establish the firm expectation that parents will be in charge of the candy once it arrives home. If kids don’t accept this, there isn’t any trick-or-treating. Tough love meets Halloween!

Treats for Track!

Walk or ride or run around the playground could earn a treat later on. Beyond the healthy, regular exercise all kids need, extra physical activity justifies being able to have an additional treat. This is a version of smart calorie counting. Children who learn to think about what they are eating each day, and how much they are burning off, will likely grow into young adults more aware of their bodies, nutrition, and more willing to engage in physical exercise.

Space It Out.

Candy has a very long shelf life. Break it up for long-term enjoyment. Spill out the contents of all those plastic pumpkins and pillowcases to visually plan what you want to do with so much candy. Maybe a few pieces at the end of the week, perhaps for getting to school on time or getting teeth brushed, for eating healthy dinner, for homework done. Maybe limit one or two a day after eating a health dinner.

Enlist your child’s help.

That may sound like asking the fox to guard the hen house, but children often come up with great solutions if you tell them they need to be in charge of their bodies and tell them they are smart enough to brainstorm solutions with you. “I need your help,” one parent I know recently said to her seven year old. “We have too much candy. I know its fun to eat, but we have to figure out a way to handle so much of it. I want you to enjoy it, but how can we keep from eating it all at once?”

Give Away and Share.

Finding people with whom to share your candy is a loving, caring act. Maybe it’s an elderly person on your block with whom your children don’t interact with very much. Maybe it’s your regular postal carrier, teachers, or a new potential friend. This is a great way to turn something often seen as frivolous, and sometimes greedy, as fueling positive social interactions.

Throw Away?

When all else fails and there’s just too much candy, it might be time to throw some of it away. Better inside the garbage pail than too much inside your child’s tummy. Yet, is this the right message to be giving to your kids? Isn’t it wasteful to throw food away? Yes. Fortunately, there’s nothing of much nutritional value inside the colorful, shiny wrappers. Sometimes, throwing things away that we don’t need teaches kids not to be wasteful in the first place. Given how much we spend on Halloween candy, upwards of two billion dollars a year, it seems better we buy and consume less to start with. If the idea of throwing it away still bothers you, some communities have candy
Buy Back Programs help reduce the amount of candy consumption. Start one in your school or town.

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