Halloween can be a tricky holiday to navigate when you’ve got a little one at home.
Sure, the costumes are adorable, and the idea of trick-or-treating is exciting—but what about the candy? The sugar? Their health? Supporting a positive relationship with food? Trust us, we’ve been there and thought through it all.
If your child is under two years old, you’re probably wondering how to keep the festivities fun while avoiding sugary treats?
But if your child is older, you might feel a little unnerved or worried about the candy stash you’re about to inherit.
So, maybe you’re here. Like us, trying to strike a balance between enjoying the spooky season while keeping your baby or toddler safe and nourished.
Thankfully, we’ve done a bit of reflection in terms of what’s worked well for us as moms who’ve been in the game for ten+ years and as Dietitians who understand the nuances of nutrition.
We’ve got you covered with tips and ideas to embrace Halloween without the worry, and strategies to help your older kids enjoy candy responsibly without turning it into a forbidden fruit.
But first, how to celebrate Halloween if you have a baby or toddler?
Halloween is such a fun time, if not for babies and toddlers, then certainly for the parents who can dress them up in cute little costumes! But, what about candy for our wee little ones?
If you have a child under 24 months, the formal recommendation is to avoid sources of added sugar, which is in most candy. The main reason for this is that young children are growing at such a rapid rate that there just isn’t that wiggle room for sugar that doesn’t offer any nutritional value.
We’ve written an entire article dedicated to everything you need to know about sugar for your baby and it might be a great refresher!
One more thing…most Halloween candy is a choking risk for such young children. Now that’s a horror you want to avoid! (check out the safety section at the end of the article for which candies are considered choking hazards).
But that being said, there are plenty of foods you can offer to take in the Halloween spirit with your bub:
- Mandarin fruit cups
- Applesauce pouches
- Pumpkin pouches
- Amara Yogurt Melts (some are orange colored)
- Pumpkin Pie Pudding
- Banana strips as little ghosts
- Cottage Cheese Jack-O-Lantern Filling
Always remember to take your child’s unique feeding skills and abilities into account when offering any food!
Enjoy a balanced meal before trick-or-treating
This is super important.
No seriously, it is.
Let’s read it together one more time: before heading out for a fun evening of trick-or-treating, offer your child a balanced meal.
This probably isn’t the best time to introduce new foods or revisit something they’ve previously rejected—think of this meal as fuel. Besides, you likely wouldn’t skip dinner any other day of week for your kiddo, right?
Offer a meal that’s familiar and enjoyable to them. It will ensure they get some nourishment before the candy excitement begins.
If their belly is satisfied, they’ll be better equipped to navigate the evening’s treats without feeling overly hungry, which can lead to overeating candy. We could get into the impact of hunger and fullness hormones but we’ll spare you that physiology lesson!
Keeping this meal low-stress and familiar allows you and your child to focus on the fun ahead and keep that fun flowing into the evening!
Consider introducing your children to candy before Halloween
In the weeks leading up to Halloween, you might consider introducing candy slowly to take away some of its “forbidden fruit” appeal.
This could look different for each family. In Nita’s home, she’s been offering one piece of candy per day a week or two before Halloween to help reduce her kids’ preoccupation with sweets and the feeling that they need to “go hard” on the big night.
This way, candy doesn’t hold that overwhelming allure—it’s just another food they enjoy from time to time. This helps them approach Halloween with more balance, knowing that candy is something they can enjoy regularly.
For younger kids - limit the route, not the candy
We get it- that gigantic pile of candy at the end of the night can feel overwhelming as a parent who’s trying to balance the psychological fun of the event, the enjoyment candy brings, + keep those sugar recommendations in mind!
One way to inherently limit the amount of candy without overtly restricting it is to simply plan to trick or treat for less time. Meander around, chat with neighbours, plan a shorter route – all this can help reduce the number of houses that get trick-or-treated and therefore reduce the amount of candy that gets collected.
This strategy works better for younger kids as the older ones will likely have their own plans for how long and how far they want to go and may catch on to your ulterior motives, thus increasing the psychological allure of candy all the more.
On Halloween night (& the next day), allow your children to enjoy as much candy as they’d like.
You might think we’re off our rockers with this one, but when you come home from trick-or-treating, (and after you’ve sorted through their candy to determine if it’s safe for your child to eat – more on that below), then we encourage you to allow your child to enjoy the fruits of their labour by permitting them to eat as much as they want.
Yes, this does require superhuman levels of restraint on our end as parents. With the best of intentions, we want to ensure they’re filling their bellies with nourishing food. And we’re not going to sugarcoat it–sweet foods provide many benefits in life, but they generally are not nutrient dense.
But, we can’t keep our kids in a health food bubble.
Here, in North America where we’re from, the majority of people live in a world of plenty and our kids need to learn how to exist in that environment while maintaining the ability to regulate their intake. By allowing them to practice these skills on Halloween night, you’re setting them up for success as they move on in life.
By figuring out how to live in a world of plenty early on, as teens and adults they’ll know how to:
-go to a party and not feel glued to the food table
-eat at a buffet without leaving feeling like they ate out of control
-buy a bag of cookies and not feel compelled to eat them all in one sitting
It may seem counterintuitive, but the more freedom people are allowed around food, the better able they are at eating the amount that’s right for them, in that moment, for their bodies.
So, what does this Halloween feast look like, practically speaking?
- Serve up glasses of milk and maybe even some fruit to go along with the candy
- Set a natural time limit of their bedtime
“[normal eating] is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating.”
It’s helpful to remind ourselves that it truly is normal to have nights, like Halloween or Thanksgiving feasts, when we might eat a bit more than we “need” to because it’s all a part of trusting our bodies to self-regulate on other days.
Tip #3: Eat some candy, too!
This is an opportunity to role model what a healthy relationship with all foods looks like. It’s good for our kids to see that adults enjoy both broccoli and chocolate bars… although maybe not at the same time?! It shows them that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying sweet foods.
There may also be some candy in their stash that you don’t really enjoy. Perhaps you’re not a fan of coconut? You can also model what it’s like to try foods you haven’t learned to like yet. As the adult, you likely aren’t intentionally buying foods and making meals with ingredients you don’t enjoy. So, there often aren’t a lot of naturally occurring occasions where you can model having an open mind about different foods, flavours, and textures.
If you’d like, you can also make it a fun experience and play some games while eating the candy!
We created 10 simple games you can use to make candy eating more of an event! Enter your email and you’ll discover fun activities such as Pattern Path, Sweet Stack, and Blind Bite.
Here’s a video of Jess’ kids playing one of the games!
Don’t sneak away their candy
Before we talk about the candy, humour us and imagine this scenario: The Friday 5:00am alarm rings and you stop at the bank to take out some cash for the weekend, since it’s a payday. But, to your shock and horror, the bank teller informs you that your bank account is empty. “This must be an error,” you say, “I need to speak to the manager!” When the manager comes, she explains that they’ve noticed that you’ve been preoccupied with money lately and they figured it would be best if they took it away so that you can focus more on the important things in life.
How would you react?
- With immense gratitude- after all the bank has your best interest in mind!
- You’d jump over the counter, grab the manager by the collar, and demand to have your money returned
- You’re not the type to make a scene, so you walk away with tears in your eyes, feeling very sad and disappointed.
We’re going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t answer A!
After that, what would you do with your next pay cheque? You’ve likely lost trust in the bank, closed your account, and are more inclined to keep your money stashed under your pillow. Or, perhaps you decide to spend as much of it as you can, before the bank takes it away?
Why are we making up this weird situation? Because this is what it would feel like to a kid if their candy gets taken away. They’ve worked hard to collect this candy (parents of shy children know this is extra true!), and it would feel like a giant betrayal to have it taken away.
They need to trust that they don’t need to eat more than is comfortable on Halloween night for fear that it might not be there the next day.
How to Manage the Candy Stash Moving Forward
After the big Halloween feast, we actually don’t have a “one size fits all” answer. It’s really going to depend on your child’s age, temperament, and whether you have multiple kids and they keep their own stash or you combine it.
Jess’ experience is that the older her kids get, the better it is to come up with a plan together with her kids to generate their buy-in. Her basic ground rule is that the candy needs to get eaten as part of a meal or snack. In order to maintain good dentition and an appetite, it’s not a sound idea to be grazing on candy throughout the day. She also makes it clear that if the plan doesn’t feel like it’s working for the kids, that we can revisit and revise as needed.
Safety Tips
Remember when we said to sort through their loot to remove items that aren’t safe? This list isn’t exhaustive, but use this as a reminder to determine whether some candies should be a pass for your child.
Food allergies:
- Sometimes the Halloween version of a treat may be made with a different ingredient list or manufactured in a different facility than the full size version. That’s why it’s important to follow the “every label, every time” mantra! If the mini version doesn’t have an ingredient list, contact the companies to determine if it would be safe for a child with a food allergy.
Choking hazards for children under four (or those who haven’t mastered chewing yet):
- Hard candies (like lollipops)
- Round candies (like Skittles)
- Gummy candies (like fruit snacks)
- Sticky candies (like Laffy Taffy)
- Chocolate with large nuts
- Popcorn
- Tortilla chips
As you make a plan for Halloween and the aftermath, just remember that each family and child is unique. So, what works for one family may not be the best fit for another! The long term goal is to preserve the fun of the event and ensure our kids don’t feel restricted or else they may end up with an unhealthy relationship with sweets.
