The Safe Plate Project is all about happy childhoods, and a fun Halloween night may be part of your idea of a happy childhood. Food allergies do not need to stop you from having fun on Halloween. Here’s what we do before, during, and after trick-or-treating to build core Halloween memories despite multiple food allergies. I love a little magic and fun so we invite the Switch Witch to our house for Halloween. But if you’re not interested in inviting the Switch Witch, you can still generally apply these principles.
Before
Start to talk about the Switch Witch in the days leading up to Halloween. Maybe build it into a bed-time story. The story in our family is that the Switch Witch is the Tooth Fairy’s cousin. She only comes if invited which is why she doesn’t visit all children. But if we want her to visit us and take our unsafe candy away and leave safe food and toys behind she will. In our house, fairies get in through the fairy door which is the magic portal. Before Halloween we put up the door with an invitation to the Switch Witch.
We talk about safe and unsafe food. We look at pictures online of candy they might come across or if we’re in a store, point it out and talk about which are safe and which are not.
Set trick-or-treating rules. Ours are: (1) say thank you and take something or if you don’t feel safe with the choices say “no thank you I have allergies”. (2) No eating any food until we’re back home and we’ve checked the food. (3) No crossing the street without an adult.
During
Pack their medicine bag and some safe food. If they start to complain they are hungry or want to eat candy you can give them this. Continue to reinforce that you don’t eat anything from the trick-or-treat bucket.
If you can go up to the front door with them, especially if they’re younger, help them politely pick what is safest (or what you want to eat). Model “thank you but I can’t take anything s/he has allergies” so that your kid hears you and can start to do on their own, if able.
After
Dump all the candy out and depending on the age of your child they can sort with you what’s safe and not safe.
Leave the unsafe candy for the Switch Witch. Overnight she’ll replace it with safe goodies.
Let your child enjoy some candy and make sure to get some of your favorite candy too - you deserve it!
There are books about the Switch Witch but I’ve never read any so I can’t recommend. For us, it’s just part of our family storytelling. If you want to adopt the Switch Witch, I have an easy template for you here.
