No Halloween Tears Please

Celiac.com 08/24/2018 - Last year was our first gluten-free Halloween and my older son, James (now in 5th grade) got really upset when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to eat a lot of the candy from trick or treat night. He was saying he didn’t want to trick or treat and for awhile wouldn’t pick out a costume. (Prior to this, he loved dressing up and trick-or-treating.)

We solved this problem by having an unsafe candy auction for both of our boys, at the end of the evening. I went out and bought individual candies that I knew they liked (as opposed to bags of it) and non-food treats (small toys, sillybanz - stuff you might put in their stocking at Christmas). When they came home from trick-or-treating, we emptied their bags and divided the candy up: safe pile and unsafe or questionable pile.

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Then I had my bag of surprise treats - I don’t know if you are a Survivor fan, but I did it kind of like their food auction. I held up something like two containers of cotton candy and asked how many unsafe candies they would pay for it - except unlike Survivor - both boys bought it, not just one. Maybe they would shout out “five candies” - we had a separate bag for the “payment” they “paid” for all the safe candies and treats.

(My husband took the bag of unsafe candies to work where he was VERY popular.) At the end of the auction, I had something a little bigger, I can’t remember what it was (maybe a ds game?) The “payment” for the last, big treat was the rest of their unsafe candy.

I hope this helps you as Halloween approaches. My kids loved it and No-one cried.