ManicDDaily

Since writing my last post – “Sheepish On Halloween” (https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/sheepish-about-halloween/), I have been told that I was a bit of a Halloween monster for allowing my 2-year old daughter to “lose” her pumpkin of Halloween candy.  (Okay, I added the “bit of.”  I was called a Halloween monster, plain and simple.)

I’ll admit it.  I was a macrobiotic for a couple of years in my life (whole years!)   Even after I softened that stance, I bought brown rice by the burlap sack full.  I ground some of my own wheat to make yeast-free bread.  (I guess you could call it bread.)   Seaweed was not unknown in our household.

This made the whole process of Halloween, especially in a traditionally Italian part of Brooklyn and not some new-agey PC rice syrup neighborhood, extremely trying.

I did give her candy to replace the lost pumpkin-full.   (Yes, my substitutes may have included carob.) However, life and children have a way of loosening even the tightest resolves, i.e. parents quickly lose control.

Here are some of the later rules I made regarding Halloween candy:

1.   You can eat all you want but ONLY on Halloween night. This has the disadvantage of turning your childen into bingers.  It has the advantage of limiting tooth damage to one night.

2.  After Halloween, you just have one piece a day until you run out (in our society, meaning into the next year.) This encourages restraint,  but keeps the candy in focus as a problematic treasure for a very long time.   Forget about teeth.

3.  I give up.

Last note–if you have canine family members, keep a close watch.   A lot of sorting of candy tends to take place on the floor;  bags are frequently left at bedside;  even the most loving kids are too excited to be truly careful; chocolate can be lethal for dogs.

Once more, Happy Halloween.

This entry was posted on October 31, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under parenting. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: dogs, dogs and chocolate, Halloween, Halloween Candy, Halloween Candy rules, manicddaily, monster mother, parenting, parenting at Halloween