4 Little Celiacs And A Successful Halloween!

[weathertopmama]

I was so nervous about this! We were all diagnosed a year and a half ago (or thereabouts) and last Halloween we just had a little party at home.

The boys went trick-or-treating! I drilled my husband and the 3 older boys on the rule ("DON"T EAT ANYTHING!!!"). I sent homemade gluten-free sugar cookies and tootsie pops to eat on the way if they wanted. While they were gone (I was here to pass out candy to the neighbor kids) I made a little gift bag for each boy. I overstuffed each bag with gluten-free treats that I'd hidden away.

When they got home, I interested them in something else, dumped out their pumpkin buckets into bag, and replaced the T'o'T candy with my gift bags. I'd told the boys ahead of time that I would be doing this, but I thought it might be sort of traumatic if they watched LOL. The T'o'T candy went into the bowl to pass out to the neighbors, and Dh will take the leftovers to work tomorrow. We have lots of leftover gluten-free candy for here!

They were all perfectly happy. They don't mind equal or superior substitutions, they just don't want to be left out of normal kid stuff and local cultural experiences.

A success. I just wanted to share with folks who would understand!

Amy, mama of Nate the entymologist, Jonas the pirate, Henry the fireman, and Toby the scarecrow

[Nantzie]

Oooohhhh... I love little scientists!!! How cute!!! This is our first gluten-free Halloween too. I'm so glad everything went so well for you guys.

I filled my kids buckets about a third of the way with stuff that I know is gluten-free because I didn't want them to feel left out or upset. I was very concerned that I didn't know the gluten-free status of a lot of the candy. I was amazed at how much my kids (4 and 2) didn't care one bit about the candy. They loved going trick or treating, but when we got home, they just wanted to play. My 2yo son ate a few pieces of candy. My 4yo daughter didn't even bother with it or even look at any of it.

At her age I was diving headfirst into the plastic pumpkin to get to the candy. I'm pretty sure there were years where my parents had to pull me out by the feet.

Nancy

[Guest nini]

this being our 3rd gluten-free Halloween, I felt more confident about simply going through her "loot" and pulling out the known "unsafe" and the questionable ones and trading those for safe candy out of our bucket at home... then she dove headfirst into the candy... Yikes... my child on sugar is not a pretty picture!!! But she was so happy to feel "normal"... we went house to house with her friend from across the street (oh to be six again)

[vampella]

Well we had fun T'o'Ting. would have been better if we hadn't got 6-8 inchs of snow the day before and it wasn't like -14 but we are canadian we *should be used to it*

I had got a great list of safe candies from a wonderful lady on here but we got NONE of those candies...well that's a lie we got 2 pack of starbursts LOL. I was giving out tootsie rolls so I gave Emmah (almost 4) a wack of those and I e-mailed hershey canada to see which of thier products were safe but*I may eat it by the time they get back to me* really they don't need that much junk anyway but emmah needs to fatten up so the dietician said not to worry. I will just brush her teeth after every candy binge LOL.

If anyone can give me a list of candies by hershey that are safe, I'd be forever greatful.

Glad everyone had a great halloween.

[Cheri A]

This is our 2nd gluten-free Halloween, but Carleigh's whole life has involved the trading of candy because of the other allergies.

My kids really don't care that much about the candy, just the t or ting. I let them both pick 1 piece of candy to eat last night. They had plenty of sweets with the parties at school. I still need to go through and separate it.

[weathertopmama]

Great stories! I agree that it mostly about the fun, not the candy. With celiac, it just feels like every time I manage to achieve something 'normal' for my boys it is a small victory That was fun.