Go ahead.
Take away your children’s Halloween candy.
Tell them you ate all of it.
Record their reaction.
Then post it online for the world to see.
Many people are laughing at this video.
I’m not.
Some people see spoiled, whining children lashing out at their parents.
What I see are children who have waited all year for Halloween. They dress up, go trick-or-treating, bring home bags and buckets of goodies, sort it, and count it. Then their parents tell them it’s all gone—and that they’ve eaten it.
These children feel they earned that candy. Their parents weren’t the ones who knocked on all those doors.
The children are hurt. They are angry. And they should be. Maybe they shouldn’t react with such anger.
But stop and think. How would you react if your boss told you he just gave your paycheck to someone else? What would you say if your husband told you he spent the grocery budget on a night out with his friends?
Children control very little in their world.
They go to school when we tell them to, eat what we say they should, turn off the TV when we say to, and go to bed when we send them there.
We don’t need to let them eat the whole bucket of candy at once. But we also don’t need to get rid of it without discussing it with them.
Maybe Halloween candy offers parents a chance to teach them a little restraint and more than a little respect—by showing them how much we respect them.
But you don’t need to listen to me.
Go ahead. Take all your children’s candy away. Tell them you ate it. Record their reaction.
But only do it if you want to teach your children that stealing, lying, and making people upset is the right thing to do—especially if it gets some laughs.