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How to Care For Your Child Around Halloween

October 26, 2015 | 14 Comments

 

Fall and Halloween Kids

Here are some teacher tested tips to help your child recover after the excitement of Halloween while creating a positive home environment at the same time!

Balance Your Child’s Diet

Your child’s diet will affect their energy level, performance at school, and ability to do their homework. Interestingly, research now shows that sugar in small quantities is not harmful for children. A piece of candy after a healthy meal will not harm your child. The problem? The candy comes in much bigger proportions around Halloween. Around the candy rush of Halloween, focus your main meals on salads, fruit, and healthier choices! Balance their diet to keep their bodies healthy and their minds sharp!

You may find your child either tired all the time or acting out around Halloween. Imagine a sugar rush and then drop of your energy level. This is what your child may be experiencing after Halloween. There might have been also school parties and activities involving sugar you are not aware of. It is important to allow your child to have fun around the Halloween. But again balancing out their diet and lifestyle is very important. Whether permitting, get your child outside. Get them moving. Allow enough rest even if things at school are busy.
  • Related Reading: One Magic Breakfast To Help Your Child Fight Colds
Too_Much_Sugar
The good news about sugar however is that parents can use it to their advantage. Parents can use the festivities of Halloween to help their child learn. Having lots of leftover candy can be a good way to sneak in some discipline and extra education into your child’s routine in a creative way. What can be better parenting approach than using what naturally motivates kids! Your child will thank you for reading the next tips!

Be Creative About Reducing the Amount of Candy

  • After Halloween and accumulating the candy set rules on how much candy they can have and what they need to do in order to get it! For example, they can have have a piece of candy on a weekend after lunch and if they have helped with the dishes. They can have a candy every time they have done 30min of instrument practice, math HW, etc.
  • Another great use of leftover candy is doing after-Halloween educational games. Treasure Hunt Games are my favorite! They are always a great idea to instill long-lasting habits and help children feel motivated about different task expected of them. In my case, I have used those with reluctant violin practicers very effectively. At home you can chose to work on any activity your child is not so fond of, yet do it consistently in a positive and fun way.
  • I play a Fall/Halloween game with my students every year that can also be a great one to use at home. I have a basket full of candy. Each candy is wrapped up with a piece of paper asking the students to perform a task-play a specific song, show a correct posture, etc. At home that may be doing a house chore, doing a couple of pages extra reading, etc. Once they complete the task, they are allowed to eat the candy.
  • I love the comment one of our readers made about the “great pumpkin”. After Halloween, put a Halloween basket with the collected candy in front of the door. Explain to your child that ever night the great pumpkin would take one candy in order to feed another child elsewhere who is hungry.  A great way to develop character and to lessen the candy eaten after Halloween.
  • Related Reading: How Games Can Teach Your Child to Help Around the House

If Your Child Starts Acting Out At School

You have a perfectly well behaved child. And suddenly…you hear about discipline problems at school. You may start noticing your child acting up at home as well.

As a teacher, I see the most discipline problems happen around this time of the school year. It is after one of this Halloween weeks I wrote a post about receiving Unexpected Phone Call Home from your teacher helping explain the teacher’s side and offering parents support. Funnily, this one posts gets the most Google searches around that time of year. Other teachers and parents must be experiencing the same thing!

Realize that everybody is tired. This is difficult time of the school year. At that time students start getting tired and the school work demands increase at the same time. Both teachers and students start feeling overwhelmed.

Simply realizing the dynamics around that time of year is very important.

Analyze the situation- is this something that needs to be addressed or was it a one time event? Don’t jump into quick conclusion both about your child or your child’s teacher. Instead, take a step back and carefully think about the situation. Keep in touch with the teacher and observe your child’s behavior for a longer period in order to get an objective answer about how your child is doing.

Remember, balance is the best way to parent! 
Fall and Halloween Kids

Filed Under: Behavior, General Education, Parenting Tagged With: halloween

Comments

  1. Becca @ The Earthlings Handbook says

    October 30, 2013 at 5:29 pm

    This is excellent advice! For those times when the kids (or the parents trying to protect them from the candy…) do eat too much candy, here is an easy, natural way to prevent the "crash" feeling after eating too much sugar.

    Reply
  2. notjustasahm says

    October 30, 2013 at 9:07 pm

    Our community collects the candy to send overseas to the troops. Much better than keeping a bunch of sugar in the house that no one needs. Nice post! I found your blog from the #ShowingSomeLove hump day blog hop!

    Reply
  3. Maria says

    October 30, 2013 at 9:21 pm

    What a wonderful idea!!! Thank you so much for your comment!

    Reply
  4. Rosevine Cottege says

    November 2, 2013 at 2:51 am

    Hello, great post. We are here from the blog party. We would like to invite you to come over to our blog for a link up going on today. http://rosevinecottagegirls.blogspot.com/2013/10/photos-from-cottage-link-up-3.html

    Reply
  5. Juggling Real Food and Real Life says

    November 4, 2013 at 9:49 pm

    Great advice! The kids do collect so much candy. Collecting it all is fun. Eating it all is a problem. I let my kids eat for a few days all they want and then offer to buy it from them in exchange for toys. In just a couple of days, I see their energy level change. Do you mind if I share your post on my FB page? We could all use a little Halloween recovery.

    Reply
  6. Maria says

    November 5, 2013 at 12:42 am

    Thank you for your comment. Yes, we can use a Halloween recovery indeed. I am a teacher and I see the kids acting very differently. I would love for you to share the post on your FB page!

    Reply
  7. Darlene Nemeth says

    November 5, 2013 at 6:17 pm

    I'm lucky, my Honey Bunny isn't crazy for candy. She shares with Poppy, me, her cousins and me …. everyone. She didn't touch her candy yesterday at all but her Poppy did. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Maria says

    November 5, 2013 at 7:44 pm

    Darlene, yes you are lucky indeed:) thank you for your comment.

    Reply
  9. Lauren Thompson says

    November 7, 2013 at 12:23 am

    Stopping by from This Momma's Meandering Mondays! Thanks for linking up!

    Reply
  10. Maria says

    November 7, 2013 at 3:06 am

    Thank you for stopping by.

    Reply
  11. 4EYESBOOKS says

    November 7, 2013 at 2:23 pm

    Very useful information….thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  12. Brittnei Washington says

    October 30, 2014 at 7:56 am

    I can definitely see how this can be a huge problem especially if the kids are eating all of the candy too quickly. These are great tips, Maria. Thanks for sharing with us at the Creative Style Linkup!

    Reply
  13. Lisa Nelson says

    October 30, 2014 at 8:03 am

    These are really great tips, Maria. I had my first mini candybar yesterday. I haven't had one in at least a year. Seriously.

    Was it that good? No, not really And it made me sick. But after i ate it, I cut my kids off. I think one piece of candy per day is fun. They pick it out and then look forward to it the next day. When you overload, it's not even fun.

    Reply
  14. Maria says

    October 30, 2014 at 6:00 pm

    Lisa and Brittnei, thank you for your comments. Lisa, yes keeping it to one candy a day and making it a game is a great idea for kids.

    Reply

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