01/11/2025
How do you manage Halloween excess in your home? 🍡🍭🍬🍫
There’s a lot of chat out there at this time of year about how to manage lollies and kids. Do this, don’t do that..etc etc etc. 😵💫
What we want to know is what sits well with you and your parenting approach?
We know there’s evidence to suggest that limiting foods based on our own assumptions can create bad relationships with foods, and I am 100% on board with trying my hardest to help my kids eat intuitively. But honestly - giving up all limitations on lollies is a really big stretch for most parents (including us) because that simply wasn’t part of our lives growing up. It’s really hard to parent in a way that we weren’t parented!
What do we do for our nearly 4yr old? We give free access initially, and have a lot of conversations about how we are feeling along the way. We point out what we notice, and see if he can identify a solution. For example - “hey bud, I’m noticing you’re having trouble focusing right now”. Or we make suggestions like “hey I wonder if we need some other type of food to help our brain feel less fuzzy?”. If he says no, we say ok. We are just planting seeds! 🌱
We don’t talk negatively about lollies. We just speak honestly about the way they make our bodies feel. Once the event is over, we go back to usual programming. If he asks for lollies from his stash, we offer them alongside a mealtime - “sure, we can get some out to have with our morning tea”.
Honestly - we’ve done this for a few years with Easter and party bags and the rest, and he always seems to find his own limit. But also - sometimes we don’t do it this way. Sometimes we say no, or we limit based on our own adult rules, or we hide them and never speak of them again, or we eat them all and pretend he never had any in the first place (wait - am I gaslighting my child? 😬). But in those moments, that’s what we have deemed as manageable for our family, and that is OK! 👌🏼 There will always be more opportunities to tweak what we do, to learn, and to grow.
Happy Halloween, everyone. 🎃
