73 // Should you do the Switch Witch?
Should you do the Switch Witch?
Questions moms wonder when it comes to keeping vs getting rid of Halloween candy
So, your child has dumped out their Halloween candy and begun to sort their stash. They have found all of their favorites, maybe traded a sibling, parent, or friend for more, and now, they have the Halloween candy they plan to keep.
What do you do with all that's left?
In this episode, we chat about:
Places you can donate candy in your community (and how to transition to a spirit of Thanksgiving in doing so)
Ways to repurpose unwanted candy (so that mom can save money on candy come Christmas)
Swapping the unwanted candy for other fun rewards (using the Switch Witch)
Before you decide how your family wants to approach all of the excess Halloween candy, be sure you know how to share the joy (instead of stealing it...via your child's candy).
Listen to this episode of The Veggies & Virtue Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
[00:00:00] If you listen to Monday's episode, episode 73, you heard me walk through some of the process of dumping out and sorting through Halloween candy with kids. In today's episode, we're gonna chat through what to do with the candy that your family doesn't necessarily enjoy. But note that I don't say that your family wouldn't eat.
[00:00:20] For many of us, there's candy that we would eat if it's right in front of us and easily available and plentiful, but it's not necessarily something that we really enjoy. And so while in the last episode I talked about not wanting to just restrict for the sake of restricting that's of those candies and those foods, really any food that we know our child really loves to.
[00:00:43] And enjoys to eat because those are the foods that can sometimes feel forbidden if we limit our child's ability to eat them on occasion. However, one of the ways that we can support tapering off the Halloween candy to get more or to get back towards kind of an everyday intake and average level of consumption of added sugars is to be eliminating some of those foods like candy that.
[00:01:09] Don't help us get there. And so a lot of this is the candies that we're either kind of like, or the learning to like candies that can clutter up our candy bag, but not really offer us a lot of value in their enjoyment factor. So what I want to do in today's episode is to frame the context of the candy that we give away in light of which ones do our children or our family members ourselves include.
[00:01:36] Not love or not find joy in eating and flipping the script on this, which ones do we think someone else may enjoy more than us? So just as in talking about what fan or what candies we keep being those that we might trade with others because we enjoy them more than they do. So they're willing to create a trade with us.
[00:01:57] We wanna think about how framing it this way and thinking about others may enjoy this more of us as a way of reinforcing. Intuitive eating so that we're helping foster with our kids and understanding that you can have candy, you can have foods like sweets and treats, but we want to also be in tune with how they make us feel.
[00:02:18] How much joy do we get from eating them versus kind of the, I can eat it if it's their. But it's really mindless eating. Like I'm not going to eat it intuitively or intentionally because I don't actually enjoy it that much. It's more of just kind of our autopilot response, and this is where often sugar gets incorporated into the diet in ways that is excessive or unnecessary.
[00:02:40] What we wanna emphasize with our kids is where they can begin to enjoy candy in a way that it is part of an overall healthy diet and it. Feed into and foster an overall intuitive eating approach.
[00:02:56] Hey mama. I'm Ashley and welcome to the Veggies and Virtue Podcast. In this podcast, you will find simple menu ideas, kitchen organizational systems. Spelled out for mom life and feeding tips and tricks that are both evidence based and grace laced. I believe that you can find flexibility when it comes to feeding your family so that you can feel calm, capable, and connected in the kitchen.
[00:03:14] As a registered dietician and Christian mom of three myself, I want you to break free from the mealtime battles to feel equipped while feeding your kids all day long. Pull up a stool at my kitchen counter and let me pour you a cup of coffee and say a quick prayer for you. It's time to chat about the meal.
[00:03:29] Messes moments in ministry of motherhood
[00:03:36] before you go and start giving away candy. The moment October 31st is over and your candies or your children have, you know, discarded the candies that they're not super excited about, I do want you to just pause. and consider your motivation because before you even encourage your kids to sort through that candy or go through that process that I encourage you to do in the last episode, episode 74, I want you to be evaluating your motives.
[00:04:04] Why are you wanting to reduce the amount of candy? What candy do you maybe feel like you quote unquote, can't have in the house? Who is it within your family that you are feeling? Uncomfortable or insecure with having access to candy and think through these because like I do with each of the members of the mealtime made easy method, it's important that we acknowledge aspects of our past feeding relationship that are playing into our present feeding relationship and those things that are directing.
[00:04:34] Not only our own future feeding relationship, but also the feeding relationship of our children as the next generation. And that's why I in within mealtime's made easy method, I give families blank reflection questions, journal pages, prayer prompts, and a lot of tools to help support them in the process of cultivating healthy eating habits within your family.
[00:04:57] And that's not just the habit in and of itself, such as in this case, we're trying to limit. Exposure and intake of added sugars, but so easily with a distorted way of thinking or a disordered way of thinking about different. We can shift that or twist and turn it in a way that doesn't embrace intuitive eating, mindfulness and body positivity in the way that we want, not just for ourselves, but for our kids, but instead that reinforces some of those messages that we may be have been brought up with in terms of perpetuating habits that make us more vulnerable to chronic dieting.
[00:05:35] The messages of diet culture. Prone to obesity or prone to things like eating disorders because we have formed disordered eating habits in our early formative years and never really overcome. How do we handle living around and embracing all foods. So this thing said, I want us to think about how we can appropriately, safely, wisely, and reasonably discern.
[00:06:05] How we get rid of some Halloween candy and how we're giving some of it away in a way that does foster a healthy relationship with food and does reinforce a responsive feeding approach, but that also. Realistic for most of our families not needing the excess of candy in the home that we don't enjoy. So to have this discussion, I'm going to share with you three main, we'll call them buckets that I would say the candy that you might be giving away might fall into.
[00:06:32] These include things like community outreach, future holiday planning, and the infamous switch. So first and foremost, because I think that the, I'm gonna go kind of through what I, as a mom of three, consider to be easiest or lowest effort to more involved and increased effort. But to me, I think the easiest opportunity is to look within your community and to see is the dentist office doing like a buyback program?
[00:07:01] It may be one that they'll pay your children for the amount of candy that they want to sell. The dentist office kids can find that really fun because then it's like, Having an investment in their health, they're having an investment in their dental health, and the dentist wins, The child wins, everyone wins.
[00:07:16] That can be a fun option. However, if you're looking to donate it, you might be looking into elderly communities in your areas. There could be some really fun ways to get your kids involved, for them to make. If you've ever seen those like little cards that you can make where it says, you know, use this, The Mounds candy, which again, is a very commonly discarded candy by kids, but you could make a really simple, inexpensive.
[00:07:38] Construction paper card with your kid where you put a piece of candy on it and say, Mounds of people care about you, and just let your child sign their name. Put an encouraging note in it. That can be a. Fun, simple option. Additionally, you may be wanting to check with the fire police stations in your area.
[00:07:55] Even though sometimes officers themselves may not want the excess of candy themselves, they may have purposes within the community where they need excess amounts of candy to pass out at events or, you know, to give to different people in different situations. So that might be another option.
[00:08:14] Additionally, you might ask your kids school or surrounding schools if they. Somewhere that, you know, whether it's in the front office, that they need to have candy that they don't wanna use school res school resources for, or if they have upcoming science projects or math activities. Sometimes schools will use.
[00:08:30] Candy for science projects or to, you know, show math multiples or graphing projects and things like that, so you might also reach out to your community. All of these I find to be the easiest because they're the places that we're already doing life right around, and it's the easiest place for me to just put the bag of candy that we plan to give away in my car, swing into one of these, and we can stop and see if it's something that could help them.
[00:08:54] If not, go ahead and call. . However, you might also think to take it a little step further, you might, within your community, wanna think about how could you and your kids do something like sending candy to troops who are serving our country elsewhere, or finding out ways. If there's ways that you can donate the candy to a local hospital.
[00:09:14] Or an organization like a Ronald McDonald house for kids who weren't able to trick or treat and find out the requirements needed for you to be able to kind of package it up and properly get it to families and children like that. From a work site wellness perspective, it is not my preference for, as parents, us to take this candy to work.
[00:09:33] I know that with my mom being a teacher, she always said that, and she was an elementary school teacher at that. She always said that they had so much candy in the staff room and that doesn't necessarily help. The parents and the adults within the school settings, health related goals. So you can ask them, of course, if they like to have it there, but we wanna be thinking about who are the people who are going to enjoy this candy more than us?
[00:09:55] So finding those, you know, whether it be troops or officers or kids who are unable to trick or treat, or a dentist or elderly community, whoever it might be that might find. In and through this candy in ways above and before our own is a great place to first start. Additionally, as we get into the holiday season, I think the former idea is a great way to kind of transition our kids off of Halloween and shift their thinking towards being more mindful of this season, of being grateful and the ways that we can give thanks.
[00:10:30] Moving this in towards the Christmas season. Something I always find my go-to with extra candy, and sometimes this is things that I'll save. It'll be, you know, the smarties that were just not a preferred love it food candy that was kept. Or it might be the things like the gob stoppers or some of the harder candies that I eliminated from my candies, or excuse me, my kids' candy stash, purely from a safety and, you know, choking hazard perspective.
[00:10:59] And I'll save some of. To use for things like when we do gingerbread house decorating or you know, it might be the candies that my kids haven't eaten it from their Halloween stash. There is always, even with kid, even with kids who enjoy their candy and get to eat it liberally, we never make it through our whole Halloween candy stash because they just.
[00:11:20] Get less interested in it, the more access they have. And over time as that interest fades and other interests come in and replace the candy, so oftentimes we'll look through their candy bags as we get closer to Christmas for what things we could use to decorate gingerbread houses. But sometimes I will go ahead and keep a stash aside knowing that these are ones that were great on gingerbread houses.
[00:11:42] They're fun, they're colorful, they're sizes and shapes that you know the kids enjoy using, and that prevents me from having to buy that candy again come Christmas time. Last, but certainly not least, the one that I'm sure many of you have heard a lot about, especially in more recent years, is that of the switch switch.
[00:11:59] For those of you who don't know, the switch. Switch is kind of a tooth fair of sorts except the extreme opposite because I. Coming to take our children's teeth in replacement for some sort of treat or toy or monetary reward. The switch, which is used as a character, a fictional character. Of course, that arrives on Halloween night after your kids have gone to bed and they swap out some of your kids candy for whatever the.
[00:12:29] You know, elected replacement might be, and so oftentimes similar to how a child would leave their tooth out for a tooth fair, this would be something where your child intentionally leaves out candy for the switch. Switch. Because what we don't want is for the switch. Switch to be something that involuntarily.
[00:12:50] Or steals our kids' candy. This can absolutely erode trust in the feeding relationship, so make sure that that is not the angle in which you're coming from. Going back to what I mentioned at the beginning, always evaluate your why when you're thinking about how to discard or to give away some of the candy that your family has in excess.
[00:13:09] Instead, what we want to think about is the switch, which is, can be, for some families, a tool that reinforc. This intuitive eating approach, it's reinforcing that the switch, which is going to enjoy a child's giveaway pile of candy more than the child would. And so if you're not choosing to use one of the ideas that I already mentioned, some families do choose to use something like a switch switch so that the kids feel more inclined to hand over their candy to the switch.
[00:13:37] Switch, and in replacement, they may get a coloring book or stickers or you know, temporary tattoos, tattoos, bubbles. You know, a soccer ball, whatever it might be that is of interest to your child. So it's an exchange where each child who gives over their, their Halloween candy, that's the giveaway bag, and they do so voluntarily, they get a reward from the switch.
[00:14:00] Switch as a replacement. Now, I will say within the dietician community, I feel that the switch switch is so, That we see a lot of pros to, but there can also be a lot of cons too. So I just want to caution you, while there's very few potential drawbacks to the first I few ideas that I shared in terms of repurposing your candy for something like a gingerbread house so you don't have to spend money on some of these candies later on in the holiday season, or sharing it with other people who might find joy.
[00:14:29] There's not a lot of ill motive in those. However, the switch switch can be something that when not properly, Done or not, when your motives are not evaluated well in advance of using this technique, sometimes we can reinforce messaging to our kids around controlling candy in ways that we don't wanna be doing.
[00:14:48] So by no means am I saying that this is not a good idea or can't be done well. However, I do encourage you to take a minute to really evaluate why you're doing it and how you're going to approach the switch. With your family. There is actually like a little switch, Switch book and I think like a little doll that you can got, that you can buy.
[00:15:06] Similar to like the on the shelf book and doll. However, I admit I have not actually read it. We in our house don't do the switch. Switch and again, I don't, I don't discourage you from doing the switch. Switch if this is something that has worked well for your family and our family. Halloween is already a huge deal and just takes a lot out of me from the amount of the event full that happens in our own neighborhood.
[00:15:29] I have to be on for, and I am delivering on, on Halloween night that this is not a concept I've invited into our home. My kids have never asked about it, so it's just something we've never done. We've always done the former approaches that I mentioned. However, I know a lot of people, a lot of families, and a lot of health professionals, including dieticians who have used the switch switch successfully.
[00:15:49] And really mindfully to reinforce the overarching messages that along that go alongside Halloween that we want our kids to be taking away from the holiday and from their Halloween experience. So whether you choose to give candy away to a community organization or someone who's. Serving our country or someone who you think might just find more joy in it than you, be it a grandparent or another child who didn't have the opportunity to trick or treat.
[00:16:16] Think of ways that you can transition your heart and your family's hearts into the spirit of Thanksgiving as we transition out of Halloween. And consider if something like. Switch. Switch is a good and fun way to reinforce keeping the candy that really excites your child and that they truly love to eat and they enjoy, and going ahead and discarding the candy.
[00:16:38] That means less to thin. We can use all of these approaches. To reinforce the right messages to our kids as long as we're evaluating our heart behind it ahead of doing so. I hope and pray each of you have a joyful Halloween that is safe and with your kids.
