How do you handle Halloween?

[YouKnowWho]

Just thought it might be a good threat to start for any newbies (or for old timers looking for a change up).

We do let the kids trick or treat but they don't eat that candy (safe stuff is often contaminated and snack sizes change labeling, not worth it).  We trade for a safe (reasonable) bag of candy.  In years prior, I would dump their candy into our basket to hand out or send in with DH to work.  This year they are collecting it at school for the troops.

Other friends with contact allergic children have incorporated gloves into the costume to cut the risk.

[TabiCat]

True hadn't realized that we had neglected it. We have a strict rule NO candy eating until we get home. Then we trade in unsafe candy for safe candy and unsafe goes in our hand out bowl. We ALWAYS run out of candy.

[Jessica]

That's a great idea. My kids have never gone "public" trick or treating. We just go to some friends' and relatives' houses. I wish now that we'd done the traditional thing so I could have taught dd to sort the unsafe stuff out when she was little. Obviously she knows now. And naturally there are lots of things I would have done differently, not just this. Since we live in the middle of nowhere, we don't get trick or treaters to give out the unsafe stuff to.

[GingerPye]

Each of my kids gets a Halloween bag of goodies that I put together.  This year it was Divvies chocolates and candies, and a fun T-shirt.  (I gave DD a Schrodingers Cat tee --- she screamed with delight, LOL).  The candy we collect they do not eat.  But they do go out (or did when younger). 

And yeah, we dump the TorT candy right back into the bowl of candy that we're handing out, lol.

DS went out last night with a birthday party bunch.  They are in 8th grade and collected canned food for the food pantry.  (nothing to do with FAs but he did go out TorTing.)

[AllergyMum]

My son is allergic to almost all halloween candy. He wears mittins and goes out for regular trick or treating. The candy goes straight into the truck of the car when we get home. When in the house the mittins are taken dirrectly to the washer then he is handed a bag with a lego toy and safe candy. A safe balance for us.

[hezzier]

We have the same rule as Tabi, no eating candy while out and about.  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the labeling on a lot of the fun size candy.  Lots were labelled as may contain peanut.  Now for us, this is not a problem since DS is TNA, not PA.  We do not allow the kids to keep all the candy they got, this year I let them chose 10 pieces (when they were little it was 5 pcs) to keep and the rest gets given away.  In exchange for the extra candy, we've let them pick out a $5 toy, this year DD informed me she'd like to buy some songs on iTunes instead, DS will probably do the same.

[twinturbo]

DS1 started handing out candy this year. We talked about it a bit and I feel he is both ready to handle ToT and for walking around in the dark to ToT. While my youngest is a go-getting human wrecking ball my eldest is a dandy.

[Macabre]

When DS was younger, we took him trick or treating.  He loved chatting it up with people in the neighborhood (even ones he'd never met). We'd use a very cheap/disposable loot bag.  Once we got home he'd trade the loot bag for a better one.  It had safe stuff and also there was a significant prize--like very cool toy. One year it was a double stomp rocket. One year it was a smoke-filled bubble machine (these specific things were when he was older).

Some folks have the Great Pumpkin or Pumkin Fairy do this work.

DS just did not have the expectation the candy was his to keep.  I mean it's not like he would have gotten to keep all that junk if he didn't have a food allergy.

I will add that the first couple of years we sorted through candy, but we stopped this practice because:
1) otherwise safe candy is often packaged with unsafe candy, possibly rendering the safe stuff unsafe
2) otherwise safe candy was in DS' bag with unsafe candy, possibly rendering it unsafe

So we just started substituting.  This year I found some cool things for him, even though he no longer trick or treats: Jelly Belly candy corn (included some in his lunch Halloween), some German cookies, a store-bought iced ghost cookie (nut free), and some other safe goodies.