Halloween II: when every occasion is a candy bonanza

In my day, Valentine's Day meant little cards and a couple chalky sweet-hearts. Now it seems for weeks leading up to the "big day" there are aisles at Target and Wal-mart of Valentine's candy. Seems like a case of the retailers driving a trend – creating the expectation that each child should give candy to classmates, not just cards. That can add up with lots of kids in a class. I picked up my 3 yo with a stash of chocolate, M & Ms, suckers, tart candies all wrapped in hearts, cute plastic figures, Disney characters... The whining started before we even made it to the car.

We have a treat or more most days, and the whining is generally not an issue. There are several theories of how to handle treats etc, but I believe in and follow Ellyn Satter's strategies. Also see my January post, Let them Eat Cake...

We treated it like Halloween, and after a few days of intense interest we've gotten the whining and interest back to normal. Our usual way of dealing with treats: most days  as dessert with dinner (a reasonable portion) and the occasional 'snack' with treats when she can eat as much as she wants. (Note, our eager eater occasionally gets ice-cream snacks and stops at about 1/2 cup all on her own. During our transition to this approach, there were snacks where she couldn't seem to get enough, but that resolved fairly quickly with consistency.)