Do you let your kids eat as much as they want whenever they want, or do you put it away somewhere and control how much they get and when? Do you inspect it at all first?
We took a quick look-through but never found anything. The pins & razor blades stories seemed to be something of an urban myth.
We told our son after his first trick-or-treating that he could have as much as he wanted, but if he ate too much, he’d get an upset stomach. He ate too much, got an upset stomach, and never overate Halloween candy again. His younger sister learned from his mistake.
We inspected our two daughter’s candy. We put it away when they were really little.
After 2nd or 3rd grade they could eat it when they wanted. We never had any issues with them eating too much at one time. Kids need to learn a little responsibility as they grow up.
When my daughter was young enough to go beg candy from strangers, my husband or I always inspected it before we’d let her eat any of it. When she was very young, I’d dole out a handful of candy each evening, after dinner, and after she started school, I kept an eye on how much she was eating each day, but didn’t really have problems with her overeating. She likes sweets, but tends not to go crazy with them, even as a small child.
I, ummmmm, well, when she was a baby and toddler, and wanted to eat cookies like Cookie Monster, I gave her Ritz crackers and told her that they were cookies. I also didn’t feed her commercial baby food, which at the time had a lot of added sugar and salt. I think that she never really developed a taste for overly sweet foods. She’s always made a face at really sweet stuff.
We go through it right away and just toss the stuff she’s not going to eat. I mean, why have a bunch of candy sitting around for months and then throw it away when we can just throw it away today and not have to pick through it every day (I’m not one to feel guilty about that kind of thing either). Then she can eat a bunch if she wants, but she usually doesn’t. She might over do it a little on Halloween, but not too bad. The rest just gets tossed in a candy bowl that I use for her treat in her lunchbox everyday.
It’s pretty much the same policy when she comes home from school with a bunch of Valentines Day candy.
My policy is please eat it fast before I’m forced to. Better her than me. I don’t inspect it either. We live on the edge.
My mom was on a huge health food kick when I was young and she called raisins, “raisin candy” to try to trick me but it didn’t work. Raisins are gross and candy is delicious.
I will agree that raisins are gross and good candy is delicious…but I think that toddlers don’t need to be obsessed with cookies. Time enough for that when they are older. And I’m pretty sure that raisins are full of sugar, even if it is fructose rather than glucose or sucrose. I’d have to look them up, because I don’t eat them if I can help it.
Lisa still likes Ritz crackers, and she likes the occasional cookie, and she even likes candy too. She just doesn’t have the ravenous sweet tooth that many people have.
Oh yeah, I wasn’t trying to say you shouldn’t have pulled the ol’ cookie-cracker switcharoo or anything, just saying unfortunately it didn’t work on me. And it was insulting on top of that because it was such an obvious lie. Ritz are at least pretty good in their own way.
I inspect it for the good stuff, of course. I like to think the Parental Hallowen responsibilities are funded by a candy tax.
My daughter is still young enough that she’s more excited about the IDEA of everyone giving her candy to fill up her pumpkin than the consumption of it. So she can have as much as she wants, but she doesn’t want much.
We used to leave it out on the counter the first night, put it up one shelf the second, and so on until they forgot about it. Then we would eat it after they’d gone to bed 
We don’t really inspect it, but I guess we give it a cursory look while sorting.
We let them eat what they want on Halloween night, after that they choose 3 pieces every couple of days. I am intrigued with the idea of letting them self-regulate, but I’m not sure it would work for us. I have a major sweet tooth, and in my 40’s I will still eat too much candy if I start eating it - so I solve it by never starting to eat it.
I buy a bag of gluten free* candy ahead of time and she inspects her haul for gluten containing candy (Twizzlers, Kit Kats, etc.) and we swap. She can eat as much as she wants when she wants it, but she’s also not one to overindulge too badly. Somewhere around Easter there’s always half a bucket of candy left from Halloween that we pitch.
Oh, and there’s definitely a “Mom Tax”, but she tends to make it a voluntary one. I mostly chose the stuff she can’t eat 'cause I’m a nice guy, but when she wants to share her Milky Ways, too, who am I to disappoint? 
I thought I was being a mean mommy when I let my son eat too much candy, and yes he got a bellyache. He also learned his lesson and I never had to deal with it again.
It’s her candy. I let her do what she wants with it. She’s always been the sharing type so it goes fast, then no more candy until Christmas.
One of the things that always made me proud of my kids was the way they, entirely of their own volition, handled the Halloween candy dilemma. When they got back from collecting, they’d sit on the living room floor, dump out their bags and start sorting and swapping out stuff they didn’t like.Stuff no one liked went into the Mom pile, then they’d trade the things one liked and the other didn’t, and then they would evenly divide up the stuff they both liked. I of course would cherry-pick the stuff I loved, and got all the weird candy they didn’t have an appreciation for. Then they’d dump their respective hauls back into their personal candy dish, and slowly consume it over the next week. They really didn’t binge at all. I think it helped that they were in charge of divvying up the haul (after 1st grade). Before then I would only give them a piece or two a day, and since they weren’t allowed in the cupboards and forgot about it after a week, it was easy to control. I won’t say I never came home from work to find my ten-year-old son surrounded by empty wrappers, but it didn’t happen often.
My daughter loved dressing up and going door-to-door, but she wasn’t all that into candy. It would go into a big bowl, and we’d usually end up throwing a lot of it away after a few months, when the Jolly ranchers turned into one big sticky block of ick. The chocolate stuff never lasted past a day or two, of course. 
My “cut” for driving them around was any full sized chocolate bars, and they came back with these as if they were special prizes. Then, after a brief inspection (yes, razor blades are Urban legends, but …) we let them scarf until they got sick that nite. We hid the rest and doled it out slowly then threw out what no one would eat. I would often steal thing that were more or less pure dry sugar, like the American Smarties, as they make great survival food.
I never monitored how much they ate. The first day or so they’d hit it pretty hard. Eventually it would sit around nearly forgotten until discovered all melted, messy and stuck together on some spring day Then we’d throw the rest of it out.
IIRC, it was before the big fear of neighbors trying to harm your children. They dumped it out on the floor and we sorted it out. Usually I’d make a suggestion about sharing.
When I was a kid my parents didn’t inspect the candy nor dole it out or keep it from me, but when I got home from trick or treating it was my habit to methodolically lay it all out so I could see just how many snickers I got vs milky ways (and everything else). They were always there in the living room while I did it by coincidence, so that could very well have been their surreptious inspection of my candy.
When my brother was still young enough to be in the house we swapped candy to get more of our favorites as well.
I have eaten ridiculous amounts of candy before and never gotten a tummyache, so I am apparently immune to things of that sort. However, Halloween candy did regularly last me at least a week if not two.
Exactly what I was going to post, but with girls. Right down to the “Mom” pile.