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From my experience working with families all over North America, there seems to be two popular methods of dealing with candy in the home.
The Willy Wonka Method:
These families have a "candy-cupboard" - which is at kid height and available to them at virtually every hour of the day.
The Health Nut Method:
These health-conscious families seem to have nothing but agave and the odd dark chocolate chip in their pantry in terms of sweets.
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule and many families do fall somewhere in between the two sides of this spectrum. The "Health Nut" Method was closer to my childhood experience. I can tell you, and my friends moms will back me on this one, I would go buck-wild at any home with a candy cupboard. You can only control what your kid eats while they are in your own house, and chances are if you're not letting them eat any sweets at all, they might go a little crazy when the opportunity arises. That being said, I am a huge advocate for stocking your kitchen with healthy choices for kids. Making it easy for them to have a "treat" that's not going to send them on a sugar high for weeks...but what about on the holidays?
When I think back to my childhood and Halloween, despite living in a predominantly candy-free home, I was given fairly free reign on the Halloween candy. My mom would "hide" the pillow cases from my sisters and I, but I'm pretty sure she knew that we were dipping into the stash on a regular basis and we didn't get too much flack for it, hey it was Halloween!
Yes, it can be tempting for parents to take the candy away, or subtly make the stash smaller day by day, but do you really want to deprive them of an essential part of Halloween? How many times a year do they get to indulge in this way? I'm not saying to let them keep the candy in their room and monitor their own sugar intake, but maybe consider loosening the reigns (if you're the health nut kind) around this holiday and let them have their fun. Chances are, by the second week of November, the stash will be gone, the thrill of the "unknown" (ie. sugar) will have temporarily faded - and you can get back to your regular, healthy diets. Plus - you won't have them nagging at you for weeks about ruining their Halloween.
Take my word for it, even if you're a candy free household, your kid is still eating it at their friends, at school or at Birthday Parties. Keeping it out of their lives on holidays will make them feel deprived and might make over-indulging at friends a regular habit. Try de-mystifying the candy and your kids might actually ask for fruit after dinner instead, hard to believe, but it happened to me just last week with a Summerhill Club kid from a "Wonka Method" household.
