What To Do And What Not To Do With Halloween Candy
Are the mini-bars still screaming for your attention? Or have you hit full-on sugar overload, self-loathing and you will not under any circumstance touch another piece of candy as long as you live, or at least until next Halloween, or maybe the office Christmas party?
I still have a dining room table laden with candy, with no hope of it going anywhere until Monday. And the rationalizations for eating it are still coming in strong!
Halloween fairy makes her annual appearance on Friday night and makes the bags disappear (to Daddy's office). In the meantime, the kids will choose their ten pieces and then forget about them. It's a great system.
I don't think we need it anymore, but now I can't get out of it. When we started the Halloween Fairy we thought we were the most brilliant parents ever. A way to get rid of the candy without fighting and tears. And it makes everyone happy -- we turn sugary, teeth rotting candy into Lego. Yey Us!
Now that my oldest is 12, it is just pure and simple bribery.
The truth is our kids forget about their candy by day three, and from what I understand most others do as well. Not to mention, that are only about three different things that the kids each like per bag, so the rest gets rejected.
We parents are so frightened by the idea of them eating too much candy that we panic a little and maybe go overboard.
But it's too late for me now, I'm stuck going to the toy store tomorrow and shopping for toys. When in fact, what I should have done from the beginning is trust my kids to be okay around their candy and be able to walk away from it (after a binge, of course).
If you are stuck with lots of candy and it doesn't go to the Fairy's house, there are some fun things to do with it before you lose it in the cupboard. Momstown has some good ideas - I hadn't thought of making art out of candy.
Sometimes, I just break up a bunch of the candy bars, throw in some smarties and caramels and mix it into a chocolate cake. Since those are the bars the kids have already rejected -- it's the kind of late-night indulgence that adults love.
Which leads me back to the beginning -- who do we need to keep the candy away from in the first place?
Want more chaos? Last year, I wondered if there was a little zombie mom in all of us.
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