The Curse of the Halloween Candy!

Every year after Trick-or-Treating, my mom would put all our candy in a giant bowl on top of the fridge to be dished out one at a time at Mom's discretion.  Oh how I loved that bowl with it's promise of candy goodness!  Oh how I hated that bowl sitting up so and high mocking me with it's unavailability!  I cursed my heartless mother for taking my candy, taunting me with its presence, and then dispensing it in miserly portions. I swore in my little toddler heart that when I was a mother I would always let my children keep all their Halloween candy and eat it whenever they wanted.   And then I became a mother....

It seems simple: Kids + Candy = Happiness. 

But life is rarely that easy.  Kids + Candy = (Cranky Kids + Sticky Fingers + Sugar High + Sugar Low + Wrappers Everywhere + Grumpy Mom) x Infinity

Somehow the magic of free treats turns into a nightmare in a matter of days (or hours!) as the candy begins to multiply like Gremlins in water. Your house becomes filled with empty wrappers and half chewed taffies, and you find your children huddled like packs of zombies swaying to chants of I want more candy! I want more candy!

If you are a young family (everyone under six), the Big Bowl approach probably works just fine, since centralized control is the name of the game in parenting small children. If your kids are all big (ten or older), then you also aren't likely to have problems at all. The trouble happens when you have kids spread out over a variety of ages. You can trust some, others you can't. This is why having a big family is tricky. What works for one age group is often a major failure with other ages. So what do you do?

When we started discussing this post, we expected to see two very different approaches to candy management. Kate is the more responsible mom who believes in bedtimes and vitamins. Marcia is the more fun mom who believes in eating ice cream for breakfast. Surprisingly we have almost the same plan of action when it comes to candy. Since 100% of the moms we surveyed (meaning the two of us) endorse this method, we now present it to you as the definitive answer to all your candy woes.

(*Disclaimer: We change our minds and our methods all the time. We probably only agree on this because our kids are exactly the same ages. Neither the authors nor their affiliates endorse taking candy from babies or giving candy to babies.  Candy should be eaten with extreme caution and under adult supervision only. Not recommended for children under the age of three. Do not operate heavy machinery while eating candy or reading this blog.)



Life at Kate's House:
 
First of all, once you turn 12 you no longer get to go trick-or-treating.  I just have a hang up about teenagers, so mine don't go. However, I will still give out candy to the teens who show up at my door (I'm not a total ogre!), but there is a catch.  Literally.  I give candy to teenagers, but I make them stand out on the lawn and we throw it at them. :)

One snag we've had in our no-trick-or-treating-once-you're-12 rule: my oldest, who jumps at every chance to be considered older/separate from her younger siblings, was thrilled to finally be old enough to hand out candy.  My second-born?  He's not.  So we compromised.  He can dress up, and he can walk around with us and the little ones, but he can't walk up to the door, and he can't get any candy (this dubiously drawn line will get slightly murkier in a moment when I talk about how we handle the candy itself).

So, the candy.  I know lots of people will say this is mean, but it works beautifully in my house.  What we do is, upon returning home from trick-or-treating, we dump everyone's candy out in a pile in the middle of the living room floor.  We label a sandwich-size Ziploc baggie for each person, and then take turns choosing a piece of candy out of the pile.  "Everyone grab one piece.  Okay, everyone get another."  This way everyone gets the same shot at the "good candy."  When the bag is full (or when I think they've gotten enough anyway), I take what I want (Snickers), and we put the rest in a huge bag for my husband to take to work.  He takes what he wants (Almond Joy) and gives the rest to whoever fills the candy jar in his office.

Using this system, my newly-turned-12 boy is actually going to end up with just as much candy as everyone else, and is going to walk around on the 31st all dressed up.  So in actuality he's not missing out on anything.  But the perception is that he is.  And in parenting, isn't that what we have to go on sometimes? 

The bags of candy typically stay in the kitchen, where they can come and ask for a piece whenever they want it. My kids eat their candy, a piece or two a day, until around a week after Halloween. By then I'm kind of tired of having them ask all the time and I tell them to hurry up and eat the rest of it (5 pieces).  No sugar high, no drama, everything is, for one moment, "fair".


Life at Marcia's House:

I also don't let anyone over twelve go trick-or-treating. I don't think it's right for teens to be begging for candy (even though I totally did it as a kid!).  My big kids who can't trick-or-treat take turns either staying home and handing out candy, or walking the little kids around the block to trick-or-treat.

When the candy first starts rolling in (it comes in waves: school party, church party, trick-or-treating) we get out a gallon sized baggie for each child. The kids are allowed to keep any toys that they acquire, and they can save their favorite ten pieces of candy in their bags as well. Everything else goes into a giant community pile.

Then we start sorting. There are four main types of candy: Gross, Cheap, Good, and Chocolate.  There is a 50% chocolate tax that is automatically paid to my husband and I.  We take half the chocolate and hide it in our room to be consumed at our leisure.  We put the rest of the chocolate along with the good candies into a bowl. The remaining candy is sorted into bowls for cheap candy and gross candy. We buy one bag of good candy to hand out on Halloween. We mix that bag of good candy into the bowl with the cheap candy.

When trick-or-treaters arrive, we go to the door with two bowls: the cheap/good mix and the gross candy. We hand out the mix of cheap/good candy to little kids, and the teenage trick-or-treaters get the gross candy. This way everyone is happy! I get rid of the gross candy. Teens still get something. And little kids get a mix of good and cheap candy! Win-Win-Win.

When the night is over and we are done acquiring treats, everything left goes into a big pile again. Then all the kids (big and small and Mom and Dad) take turns grabbing five pieces at a time and filling their bags with candy. Everyone gets their favorites. Everyone gets an equal amount. And everything is fair.

The big kids are allowed to keep their candy in their rooms, but it is their responsibility to hide where little fingers won't find it. I keep the younger kids' candy on the top shelf of the pantry where they (theoretically) can't reach it, and they have to ask to get it.  The kids eat their candy 20 or 30 pieces a day for about a week until they get sick or I get tired of all the candy wrappers all over the house, and I make them eat all the rest of it in one day just to get rid of it!

I think the real take away message here is that you should do it Kate's way and only give them a sandwich bag full of candy and not a gallon sized bag!


So what do you do with all that extra candy?

Donate it to a shelter.  Kids who are staying in family shelters probably didn't get to dress up and go trick-or-treating.
 
Donate it to overseas troops. Check out www.halloweencandybuyback.com There's a search box at top right where you can find a participating dentist near you

Google suggests that you use it for crafts?  I don't know, I think my kids would pick it off and eat glue-covered candy.

Save it and put it and put half of it in their stockings for Christmas and the other half in their Easter baskets!



Happy Halloween!

Kate and Marcia



So tell us, what do you do with your Halloween candy?