Halloween Havoc: Tips to Tame Your Sugar-Shocked Little Monsters & Prepare Your Youngsters For the Sugar-Focused Night Ahead
Halloween Havoc: Tips to Tame Your Sugar-Shocked Little Monsters & Prepare Your Kids For the Sugar-Focused Night Ahead
By Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C.
Even though Halloween is a Spooky Sugar Overload Day, the holiday doesn’t have to become a rowdy, sugar-fueled “Nightmare on Your Street”—or lay the groundwork for sugar addiction, type 2 diabetes, obesity or hypoglycemia if you do a little planning and use a little imagination.
You can still keep peace and learn from tonight although the typical kid will scarf candies amounting to between 20 to 50 teaspoons and hundreds of calories.
Here are some tips to help your kids start the night off right before they trick-or-treat around the neighborhood and some more ideas on how to help your sugar-shocked Little Sugar Monsters once they come home home after collecting candies galore.
Start the Night Out Right Before Your Kids Trick-or-Treat
1.Serve a hearty, healthy meal.
Before your little goblins or ghosts take to the streets today, offer a nutritious meal that will help them keep their energy levels high, their blood sugar level stable and their stomachs satisfied. Choose a dinner that is full of ample protein, quality carbs and healthy fats such as salad dressed in olive oil and lemon juice, fish or organic chicken, with generous portions of asparagus or broccoli, some brown rice, and fresh apple slices for dessert (no whipped cream though).
2. Treat your children to toys.
Before your children leave the house, offer your child three simple, fun toys such as stickers, stretchy critters, creepy crawlers and even kazoos to take along with them on their trick-or-treating adventure. By giving them party favors, you’re beginning to break the link between Halloween and candy and you’re starting to put the emphasis on fun “toy treats” instead.
3. Nosh on nutritious fare.
Pack along some healthy snacks for your young trick-or-treaters to make sure they aren’t consuming too many fast-acting “goodies” all by themselves. For instance, you could fill plastic bags with mixed nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or soy nuts, or bring along a couple of sticks of string cheese and a Trioplex bar.
Make Healthy Halloween a Game
1. Become Super Sugar Sleuths or Detectives like Nancy Drew.
Add to the Halloween allure, mystery and fantasy by making it fun for your youngsters to learn about the candies they’re putting into their bellies. Go online with them and let them research their favorite candies to learn about what ingredients they contain. You can reward them for becoming candy investigators by giving them terrifying temporary tatoos, Halloween-themed pencils and pens or a morning off of making the bed.
2. Find treats that don’t trick you as much.
Encourage your young ones to learn the difference between less-bad-for-you treats such as sugar-free natural fruit leather, chocolate-covered peanuts or almonds, or organic dark chocolate with minimal sugar and candy tricks that have sugar and corn syrup as their first two or three ingredients.
3. Spread the sour truth about “sugar shock.”
Gently tell your kids that they could get a sugar hangover and feel really awful if they eat too many sweets in one night. Nicely explain to your youngsters that while sugary treats may taste REALLY good, they may lead to you’re getting a stomach ache or headache. Even worse, all those candies could result in your children becoming wired and then tired or energy-sapped, cranky or crabby, moody, brain-fogged, depressed and no fun to be around. Explain to older kids that excess sugar consumption has been linked to a host of diseases and ailments, including type 2 diabetes, depression, cancer, failing memory and acne. You also could scare them with the tragedy of type 2 diabetes, a horrible condition that increases your risk for heart disease, blindness, nerve damage and amputation. Make sure to point out that an increasing number of kids are being diagnosed with it.
4. Not listening is valuable.
If your children don’t want to listen to you, let it go, but just invite them to watch themselves like lab rats and observe how they feel after eating candies. When they find that they don’t feel well, they may learn quickly that sugar means not feeling good.
5. Go for just three.
Challenge your child to eat just three candies on Halloween night. If they accept your offer, give them a toy treat instead. Of course, if your kids eat more candies behind your back and don’t feel well afterwards, invite them to remember this next time they want sweets.
Halloween Nightmare – How to Tame Your Sugar-Shocked Little Monsters
It’s 9 p.m. Halloween night, and the lights on your street have been dimmed. Everyone seems to be winding down EXCEPT for your children, who have seemingly devoured half of the contents of their trick-or-treat bags (of course, behind your back). Here are some tips for a quick relief:
1. Offer a protein chaser.
Give your children a “protein chaser” to help deal with their “sugar highs.” That means you should give them a handful of nuts, some non-sugar-filled peanut butter, a chunk of cheese, a leftover piece of chicken or other protein snack. You also may want to throw in some quality carbs such as an apple or grapes and some carrot sticks and sliced red peppers, if your children are game.
2. Hydrate.
Be sure to give your children plenty of water (not sports drinks or juices) to help replenish after racing up and down the streets in your neighborhood and eating all that sugar. The fluid may help flush out the sugar from their system.
3. Don’t expect rational behavior!
When your youngsters are ramped up on sugar, you probably won’t get mild-mannered behavior. And whatever you do, do NOT berate your kids for eating too many candies when they get home.
4. Run away the sugar buzz.
For most children, it’s pest to let them release that fake, sugar-induced energy by doing fun dance moves, jumping jacks, playing jump rope and even (just this once!) running laps around the house. Be sure to join in on the fun, too, and put on some bouncy, uplifting music. Sooner or later, they’ll crash and come down off their sugar high, and both you and your children will be more than ready for some sleep.
5. Let them be.
For some children high on sugar, the best thing is to get out of their way, let them unwind by themselves and have some quiet time. Give them a crossword puzzle, book or board game to occupy them as they calm down.
6. Trade toys for treats.
Halloween is a time for you to get imaginative as a parent. Try to figure out ways to entice your children away from candies and towards healthy fun. This holiday, conduct an experiment: Ask your kids to trade in several candies for a fun toy. Of course, when offering this, you’ll want to explain that toys last much longer than candies.
7. Have some Halloween humor.
Above all, treat the whole evening with a sense of humor. Try to laugh at how sugar can so transform your sweeties into monsters.
As this Halloween winds down, think about things you could do next year to make your children relish healthy fun above candies.
After all, you want your children to be happy, healthy, cheerful, popular and focused, right? Well, weaning them off of sugar is a huge step in the right direction.
Connie Bennett, M.S.J., C.H.H.C. is author of SUGAR SHOCK! (Berkley Books), with Dr. Stephen T. Sinatra. Connie is a sought-after Sugar-Liberation Expert, speaker, frequent TV and radio show guest (“CBS News Sunday Morning,” “Oprah & Friends Radio,” etc.), certified holistic health counselor and experienced journalist/columnist. Back in 1998, Connie quit sugar and refined carbs on doctor’s orders, and her many baffling ailments completely vanished, including horrible headaches, crippling fatigue, heart alpitations and “brain fog.” Now, Connie mocks her unsavory sugar past by jokingly dubbing herself an “Ex-Sugar Shrew!” She has helped thousands of people break free from the depressing, debilitating aftershocks of overloading on “culprit carbs.” She runs the popular SUGAR SHOCK! Blog
(www.SugarShockBlog.com) and hosts the Stop SUGAR SHOCK! Radio Show. She has been widely published (The Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, eDiets.com, SheKnows.com, etc.) To learn if you’ve been brainwashed to become a sugar addict, take the SUGAR SHOCK! Quiz at www.SugarShockBlog.com.
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