Handling Halloween

[velvetpage]

How does your family handle Halloween?

Specifically - what do you do about the candy? Do you pool it for family use? Dole it out a few pieces at a time? Let kids keep it in their rooms, to be eaten at their discretion? Let kids decide when to eat it, and accept the consequences themselves, or let them decide with some limits - for instance, no candy before lunchtime? Do you allow kids to have separate stashes of candy that their siblings aren't allowed to have, and if so, how do you handle accusations of theft?

This isn't a big issue for us yet - we're still at the dole-it-out stage, and she doesn't notice if I eat some of her candy. :) But it will start to become an issue, and I want to be prepared when it does.

Comments

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

We're permissive n thins Each keeps his own, eats it at will. If they pig out, well, to the extent it is a problem, it's ovre soon. If not, well, they get to have it for longer. In any case, the immediate consequences of pigging out or not are clear to them after the fact if not before, and so it is an opportunity for learning.

However, there is a rule: if they leave it lying around in plain view in a public place (like the living room), it's fair game for everyone in the house. That helps keep things neat. And if they don't keep it put away in their own rooms, the dog has a habit of getting to it.

Exception for chocolate: Since chocolate is toxic to dogs, it is a restricted substance here: it *always* has to be kept securely locked away (secure against dogs, that is).

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

On occasion there have been exceptions -- such when one of them can't go trick-or-treating or something. I forget what we did then, but we may have taxed the others in a kind of income-redistribution, and we may have provided some of the leftovers that we hadn't given away to trick-or-treaters.

And they usually conduct a trading session on Nov 1 when they trade things they don't like for things they do -- learning negotiating skills in the process.

By the way, from almost before they can count we've given them an allowance. In the earliest years they tended to spend it on candy, making excruciatingly difficult decisions on how to spend their 5 or ten cents. The allowance was always enough to buy *something* meaningful to them. But never enough to buy everything. I remember seemingly endless change-making sessions in which they traded a nickle for five pennies with me, and then back again. It got tedious sometimes, but they did start to learn about money and counting that way. But I wish the stores would all post prices that *included* sales tax -- it makes it so so much harder for a four-year-old to understand prices when they have to add 15%.