For most parents, the biggest worry during Halloween are not the ghosts, goblins, and scary costumes, but the ever-abundant Halloween sugary treats. Eating sweets not only makes children unruly but also increases their chance of developing dental caries and other dental conditions.
So, how do you survive Halloween without giving sugary treats to your children and other children who come to your house to trick-or-treat?
1. Giving Prizes Instead Of a Treat
Instead of buying candy, look for practical and inexpensive gifts that you can give to your kids and those who come to trick-or-treat. Some inexpensive gifts that you can give to children include temporary tattoos, stickers, pencils, erasers, whistles, balloons, and bubbles.
2. Introduce Play Instead Of Treats
Buy play toys, molding clay, and glow sticks to keep your children busy during Halloween. If you want to save some money, you can make molding clay from wheat flour and pack it in a plastic package for your child to play with.
3. Prepare Healthy Foods
When you go shopping for Halloween candy, try to look for sugar-free alternatives. You can also prepare healthy snacks at home such as chocolate sweets and fortune cookies and hand them to the children. Children will be thirsty after long hours of trick-or-treating. Therefore, you can serve some fresh orange juice.
4. Create Something
There are a lot of fun projects that you can do with your children instead of taking them trick-or-treating. These include paper-mâché, painting a chair, bed or their room, scrapbooking, or making and flying paper airplanes.
5. Find Fun Ideas Online
You can search online for fun ideas and activities to turn Halloween into a treat free holiday. Places like Pinterest and Youtube with giving you great ideas of projects that you can engage with your kids to keep them busy during the holiday.
Dental Care after Halloween
Despite our best efforts to keep to a treat free Halloween for our children, the fact is that they will still eat some sugar, which may expose them to tooth decay. Visit us to learn how you can protect your children’s teeth from decay or book an appointment to have a specialist look at your child if you suspect they have dental problems.