By Larissa Phillips

My son was in kindergarten the first time he went trick-or-treating. Up until then, instead of taking our kids out trolling for candy, a friend and I threw a joint Halloween party. Kids went home with one or two pieces of candy in their goodie bags. (Most of them were such sugar-innocents that they didn’t even know it was candy.)

After the party games, we’d all run over to watch our neighborhood’s Halloween parade. It was everything a holiday should be: friends, food, a few treats – good times. But the jig was up with my second kid. By the time my daughter could walk, her older brother was a seasoned trick-or-treater, and she quickly followed in his footsteps.

Now the week after Halloween is spent managing my children’s candy intake. At 9, my son is measured and calm about it, and still has leftover candy months later. My 5-year-old? I might need a rehab program for her candy addiction. Last Halloween, when she found out she couldn’t have candy for breakfast, she begged to be allowed to “just play with it.”

Out of desperation, I informally polled parents to find out how they deal with the every increasing bounty of candy in this harvest season. Here are some of their responses.

• I always let her have a bunch the first night and then stick it in the freezer where it gets forgotten in our low-sugar household. – Liz, preschool teacher

• We get a visit from the Halloween Fairy. It’s optional (in our house) whether she comes or not. The night after Halloween (having eaten your fill on Halloween night), you leave your bucket or bag of candy on your bedroom windowsill (that’s how she knows you want her to come and take it). The Halloween Fairy comes and takes the candy and leaves a toy or other treat. We also usually leave a note just to be sure. – Cay, stay-at-home mom

• I believe that you can’t take your kid to the ocean and not let them swim. So I let her eat all the candy she wants and I surreptitiously get rid of the more odious ones. We go through everything at home and together get rid of some. When we’re done playing and sorting, the rest goes in the huge bowl on the top shelf that she can easily climb up to. I occasionally go through it and get rid of some more. Sometimes I gorge. Then my dad visits and eats most of it. Leftovers are sometimes ice cream toppings. Sometimes there’s still some by next Halloween. – Sandye, artist

• Until last year, my daughter didn’t actually like candy. Then she went to kindergarten and developed a taste for junk. She would actually try to stash some away when I wasn’t looking. I tried to stay calm. I explained that she didn’t have to lie about eating candy, but it’s not good to eat it instead of dinner. I tried not to make a big deal about it. Then we put the bag in a closet, out of sight, and she forgot about it within a couple of days. – Mirem, landscape designer

• I try to have them eat some food before we go out trick-or-treating. After that, all bets are off, and they basically are allowed to gorge themselves that night. I do aim to slow them down a bit, but I love the fun of Halloween. And I love candy, so I don’t want to ruin the night by micromanaging it and getting mad about the 25th piece of candy – when No.’s 23 and 24 were allowed. After the kids go to bed we pare down the volume and remove all the big jaw-breaking and taffy-type things. After Nov. 1, it’s usually one piece a day, occasionally two, whenever they remember. It doesn’t take that long for them to forget about it, though. – Jamie, guidance counselor

• Remarkably, our son self-regulates. The first few days, he likes to have one or two a day. We then lay it out and it sits there for months. The “good stuff” like chocolate goes the quickest. The biggest problem is our eating it ourselves and him noticing and asking in an accusing tone, “Did you eat my candy?” – Judy, talent agent

For more ideas about how to deal with this upcoming bounty of candy, or to add your own comment, visit my blog at Parenthood.com/food.php, where you’ll also find other Feeding Your Family columns and recipes.

Happy Halloween!