Health – Managing Halloween sweets

Halloween can be scary for parents, and I don’t mean the plethora of fancy-dress ghosts, witches and goblins that will be roaming our streets. When we want the best for our children, the scariest thing at Halloween has become the idea of our child consuming too much sugar!

Raising healthy kids with a positive relationship with food and their bodies becomes challenging when certain foods are marketed directly to them.

In an ideal world, we want to empower our children to make healthy choices without compromising their happiness. This includes learning to regulate their own eating and deciding what’s right for their bodies. It’s a skill that takes time and experience to develop. So, how do we create a safe environment for them to learn while protecting their healthy relationship with food and their bodies?

Basically, they need two things: regular structured access to the foods and opportunities for unconditional access to more highly palatable foods. With structured access on a regular basis, we select the portion amount (usually around the size of a child’s palm) and we serve it alongside the main meal, then the child gets to decide when and how much of it they eat. I would recommend doing this a few times a week. When it comes to unconditional access, we serve these foods alongside other foods in a larger amount at snack times (so it doesn’t affect the intake and nutrition of the main meal) and let children eat as much as they want. This should be done every couple of weeks. If your child is becoming more obsessed with this food it’s better to do it more often (sounds counterintuitive, I know)!

Research tells us that if we restrict sweet foods, children never get the opportunity to learn how to manage them and it leads to binging when they do have access to these foods.

Halloween is a perfect time for children to learn how to self-regulate these foods. If we let go of the need to control our child’s eating, we can relax and enjoy the celebration with them – creating memories of mischief and fun, rather than battles over how many sweets they have.
Halloween plan:

• Allow your child to eat as much or as little as they want on the night of Halloween. They may eat more than their body feels like (especially if this is a new freedom) and feel sick after, and that’s okay.
• Use neutral language in reference to the foods on offer. Try not to refer to them as ‘treats’, ‘occasional foods’ or ‘unhealthy’. Food is food.
• Give your child the autonomy to manage their sweet collection the following day. Afterwards, implement a more structured access to the remaining stash during mealtimes.
• As the novelty fades, balance naturally emerges. Knowing that treats can be enjoyed guilt-free eliminates the need to sneak these foods or to excessively indulge.