This seems to fit in here.
My kids’ school has them categorize and count the damn candy-then make a bart graph.
You have to understand–I had a kid (who is now a vegetarian) who was a wee plump as a child. We did not encourage sweets per se (never had candy around the house), and I dreaded Halloween. When she was small, I would throw alot of it away, and she never knew the difference.
Enter second grade, and now Halloween is homework.
Yep, I agree that tabulating and categorizing are good skills to know–but damn! It took some of the pure fun gloss off Halloween for the kids and was my nemesis–I couldn’t throw away 4 of her Hershey bars, because NOW she knew how many she had! Grr.
She got over her baby fat and now is quite attractive.
But my youngest is now is second grade and already grumbling about the homework that the math teacher gave them for Halloween… :rolleyes:
To me this is just an aspect of a generalized type of horrible parent - the parent who has some weird egotistical drive to use their children to deal with their own bizarre worldview. Parents who decide that their children can only eat soy-carob-honey candy because of their own fucked-up need to demonstrate that they’re different from everyone else are awful people. Have all the crazy issues you want, but pretending that a couple Twix bars on Halloween are going to harm your child just because you want to demonstrate your ascetic moral purity means you’re so egocentric that you can’t put your own crazy-ass moralism on the back burner for one goddamn night a year. That makes you a selfish, self-centered, bad person. Being a parent means putting your kid first. Allowing your kid to participate in a cultural ritual is a part of their existing in this society. Deciding your kid has to sit out and see all the other kids having fun is a shitty thing to do. People who are that self-centered shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.
:: offers Excalibre a Twix ::
You’ve been over @ mothering.com too, huh.
One thing you DO have to remember is that *some * of the time when kids are denied candy it is due to a real problem. Case in point: When my younger daughter was little, she kept getting irritating, itchy rashes. The doctor said it was not an infectious disease, but might be an allergy. Or it might just be extremely dry skin. Or both. So for a time we had to avoid, among other things, anything containing corn. Which includes corn syrup. Which is in most candy. Used to irritate the heck out of me when bank clerks et al would hand her a lollipop and I had to be the wicked witch and take it away from her. No halloween candy for that kiddo.
So there.
When I read the OP, I thought rationing meant people who hand out the candy in Scrooge-esque amounts. My grandma (the one who lived to be 105) used to make kids sign their names so no one would come back for a second dose. Except she’d already eliminated that possibility by handing out peppermints. (The kind you get at the end of a restaurant meal. Yeah, kids are really gonna double back for that crap.)
As for rationing your own kids’ candy, bear in mind that if you hoard it for too long, it just gets stale.
As for rationing, though, that seems perfectly reasonable. I mean, not turning the Halloween candy into some sort of bizarre idol that might on some rare occasions grant the kid a boon, but just because I tended to come back with about ten pounds of candy, and there’s no reason for that NOT to last a while. As long as the parents aren’t viciously stingy with it. And they let me eat ridiculous amounts of it on Halloween night, at least.
Fuck you too groman. For the record, we weren’t well off and we didn’t get candy on a regualr basis.
Also, my mom probably didn’t want to deal with 3 simultaneous cases of indigestion/vomiting from eating a metric ton of candy in one sitting.
Teaching one’s children moderation! Oh, the HORROR!! :rolleyes:
This is stupid. Being a parent means deciding what, based on your values, is best for your children.
I participated in Halloween when I was a kid, my mother was obviously ok with the holiday. My children do not. The reason they don’t is because I don’t think there is anything positive about this particular holiday. It’s all about greed on the part of the kids. Kids are very selfish creatures and I just don’t see any benefit in a holiday that reinforces that “GIMME NOW” mentality. They still eat sweets, in moderation. They have the opportunity to dress-up and make-pretend anytime they want. Their life isn’t coming to end just because we don’t celebrate this holiday.
I don’t think Halloween is worshipping Satan and I don’t think badly of people who celebrate the holiday. But why should I celebrate a holiday I don’t believe in? Would you tell an observant Jew to participate in the secular celebration of Christmas just so their kids don’t miss out on any fun? Should we all start celebrating Hannukah so everyone is the same?
You’ve proven my point very well. It’s not a matter of “what you believe in”, it’s an aspect of living in a culture and allowing your children to participate in it. Halloween is an excellent thing; the whole neighborhood participates in a community ritual designed to make kids happy. You want to deny that to your kids because you have some bizarre desire to isolate your children from a cultural event, and one that is more important nowadays since in a lot of communities people aren’t involved much in their neighborhood and don’t really see their neighbors all that often. Congrats. You’ve decided that your kids should be your tool for some meaningless, pointless rebellion against society. Good for you.
Oh, and comparing your own stick-up-your-ass desire to make sure your kids aren’t having fun like all their friends on Halloween to actual meaningful religious beliefs is ridiculous and offensive.
Bravo!! Nailed it in one, Excaliber .
My kids never missed one and my wife and I took turns going out with them because the only thing more fun than that is staying home and seeing all the little ghosts and goblins coming to your door.
My kids are now sending their kids out and my only regret is that i’m not able to go out with all of them. (eight grandkiddies, dont’cha know!)
But I am going out with two of them, ages six and three and we’re going to have a blast. It’s one of the great things about being a kid.
No, it’s not. As I explained before, for me it was more about getting dressed up and walking around the neighborhood and seeing all the great costumes. And it was about being allowed to stay out after dark with no parental supervision, and the thrill facing the dark side of life, what with all the ghouls and goblins.
Even if it’s somewhat about the greed, so what? Kids get three days per year where they can indulge without reprisals. It’s quite possible to raise unspoiled kids without begrudging them any of those three days.
I’m just sad that I have class tomorrow evening and won’t be able to hand out candy to the little beggars. 
It’s one of the nicest holiday traditions we have, in my opinion. I just love the whole neighborhood doing something together.
I love you **Excalibre ** and every one of your gems in this thread. I read your first one aloud to my husband. Is it normal to take 2 breaths in one sentence? Maybe not, but it was worth it.
I’d like to reverse trick-or-treat at these folks’ houses. Just show up with my devil horn headband and give them some of my Butterfingers. Not all of them, mind you, just some.
I like the reverse TnT!
To me, Halloween is all about theater–to be allowed to publicly display another persona for a day, and to see everyone else do the same is no small thing for anyone.
Playing “dress up” is not the same at all. That is important, but a more private act. Halloween costume is showing the world that YOU can be Superman or a zit or even a tree. It’s wonderful. It comes from within–some really get into it and make eloborate costumes, some run out and buy the best, others (like my neighbor) pinned socks to her outfit and went to a party as “static cling”.
I don’t understand why parents feel the need to disallow their kids to participate in this. I feel sorry for the kids, but what can you do? Mandate costumes and revelry? :dubious: No, thanks.
I do feel bad for those kids who realy can’t participate too much d/t medical reasons–like diabetics and allergy sufferers. But they can do the costumes!
I read this and thought, “Are we really talking about the same holiday?”
We just finished our trick-or-treating (the town moved Halloween to a weekend night, but that’s another Pit thread). This was my daughter’s first year t-o-ting. Both her dad and I went around with her, so we left the big bowl of candy on the porch for kids to help themselves. Even though packs of preteens without parents came by, they were all restrained – there was still candy left in our bowl after we went around the whole block. Nobody cleared it out (gimme now, huh?).
My daughter won’t eat the vast majority of the candy (we’ll give her a few nibbles, but mostly give it to others or ourselves). To her, the fun was going to all the neighbors’ houses, being the center of attention as they gushed over her costume, meeting their dogs and cats, checking out the different jack o’lanterns, and of course taking the candy and dropping it into her bag. She had just as much fun answering the door at home and dropping candy in the other kids’ bags. Since it’s getting cold now, we parents had the opportunity to catch up with some other adults in the neighborhood that we don’t run into outside so oftem.
The elderly woman who lives alone had possibly the most fun of all tonight. She had been looking forward to this night for several weeks, and kept asking to make sure my daughter would be coming. She greeted all the neighborhood kids by name and told them how perfect their costumes were.
If you honestly can’t find a anything positive in Halloween, I feel sorry for you.
Just in case there hasn’t been a thread like that, I will step forward now and admit to rationing candy. Even worse, I confiscate all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as my tribute for buying them costumes and taking them trick-or-treating in the first place. 
Seriously, I have always rationed the candy. Not the drastic one-piece-at-a-time method, but I do try to keep it under a handful a night. I dislike being awoken by puking children in the night, and I generally wouldn’t refer to “binging until sick” as part of a social contract.
At the handful-a-night rate, my children are usually through with their haul of Halloween candy just in time for all the gooey sweets and treats of the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays. Then, I make them take a month-long break until Valentine’s Day. They are only allowed to eat broccoli and tofu during January. 
If anything other than broccoli and tofu is even appetizing in January, then you’re doing October-December wrong.
I’m actually married to one of those “No Halloween” curmudgeons.
I certainly don’t understand his attitude about it as I know he went T-or-T’ing as a kid and enjoyed it. His refusal to participate is not based on any religious objections, or anything that I can clearly identify…he just says he doesn’t believe we should send the kids “begging for candy from strangers.” I pointed out that these “strangers” are our friends and neighbors and it’s just a silly, fun holiday, but he won’t budge (or even pass out candy). He’s not a social guy and I think Halloween simply marks the beginning of a stressful social season for him.
This year is the first year I won’t be available to chaperone the kids, so I’m having a neighbor take them. She said to send them over with a big bag! She’s alot of fun, has 5 going on 6 kids, and I’m sure they will all have a good time.
On the up-side, DH did carve some very nice pumpkins today (a first!).
I envision him in his future elder-hood as a cranky old man who trips people with his cane while mumbling something incoherant when they walk by.
I will be stealing any “starburst fruit chews” that I see on tuesday.
I totally agree with that, and sorry fessie I ddin’t mean for my post to sound snarky toward you, especially now that you’ve clarified that it was parenting boards (based on some of the other pit threads about those boards that I’ve seen, imho, I’d avoid them, but that’s another rant).
As I said, moderation in all things, including moderation, to include a boring cliche. But yeah, sanctimonious ANYTHINGS are enough to make a person want to smack someone to sleep.
The OP is correct, do what you want with your life and your kids (within reason of course)., but do NOT go about announcing and acting as if someone else’s choices are inferior.