The Switch Witch

Let me tell you the quick story of Eatherton’s Halloweens past… and how we were introduced to The Switch Witch.

Brady’s 1st Halloween (10 months old)– We dressed him up as a lion and carried him around the block in the freezing cold. He hated his costume. He hated me taking pictures of him in his costume. We saw no other families, kids, or signs that Trick or Treating was welcome (gotta love condo living in downtown Chicago.) We scored zero candy.

Brady’s 2nd Halloween (22 months old)– He chose his costume for the first time, which was Bob the Builder. He dressed up several times that year (for school, for a party, etc.) and started to really get a feel for what the holiday was all about. On Halloween, we gathered at a friend’s house and went Trick or Treating with a couple other families. Brady was apprehensive about going to the first door, but that quickly changed. He ate only one piece of candy that night– a Tootsie pop. I’ll never forget it because he treated that sucker like it was solid gold. We went home, hid the candy, and never heard one more word about it. Matt and I polished off his loot by the end of the week (what?, the kid only went to about 10 houses that year.)

Brady’s 3rd Halloween (2 years, 10 months)– Brady was totally down with Halloween. He knew what he wanted to be (a pirate), what he wanted to do (run to all the houses and get as much candy as possible) and what he didn’t want to do (see any haunted houses). He barely made it through his pizza dinner before he had one foot out the door to go Trick or Treating. Matt and I knew that this was going to be the year that candy was an issue. And it was, that night. There’s no telling how much chocolate he ended up eating. He went on and on about how many M&Ms he got, how many Reese’s Peanut Butter cups he had… and how he was not going to share. Nice kid.

The day after Halloween, Brady woke up and asked for candy. Here we go, I thought. We pushed him off until after dinner, where he was given two pieces for dessert. Much to our surprise and delight, he never asked for any more candy after that (again, Matt and I polished off his loot!) We knew though, that the next year wasn’t going to be as easy.

This was when a friend told me about The Switch Witch– a “good witch” that comes to your house after Halloween and “switches” out their Halloween candy for a gift. She said she tells this story to her kids before Halloween to get them excited about the prospect of trading in their sugary Halloween goodies for a toy, and to get them on board well in advance so that no one feels like their candy is being taken away or stolen.

If you do a search online for “The Switch Witch”, you’ll find a couple of different stories/approaches. Depending on your child’s comfort level with witches and with someone “coming into your house while you sleep”, you can adapt one of the stories you find, or  completely make up your own. That’s what we did. Well, actually, that’s what Brady did. In true Brady fashion, he commandeered my Switch Witch story and made it completely his own. I barely had a sentence out before HE was telling ME all about her (even though he’d never heard of her before). I wish I could tell you her backstory, but to be honest, it was too hard to follow!

I was able to steer him back to reality so that I could hit upon 4 key points:

1– The Switch Witch comes the night AFTER Halloween (yes, she’s supposed to come on Halloween night, but I cannot imagine trying to get a three-and-a-half year old hopped up on sugar to part with his bag of candy 2 hours past his bedtime, no matter how prepared he is for it.) Not even going to go there. We can wake up the next day and sort it all out.

2– Brady can pick out 7 pieces of candy that he can keep, the rest goes to The Switch Witch. This may seem arbitrary, but 7 is a large number to a 3 year old, and I figure that’s one piece of candy a day for the next week. Hopefully by then, he’ll be onto something else.

3– The “trade in” candy will be left in a bowl on the kitchen table and when he wakes the next morning, the gift will be left there instead. This is to avoid any fear of someone coming into his room while he sleeps, and it also makes it easier for The Switch Witch (aka, Mom) to make the switch.

4– The Switch Witch will leave one small gift in exchange for the candy. This was a major discussion point, as I knew it would be. First, Brady wanted to know what “small gift” meant. Was it going to be a Matchbox car (because he already had a lot of those)? Was it a book (because a book isn’t a real present)? Or was it like a pogo stick or something? I told him that this was The Switch Witch, not Santa Claus, and that she wasn’t able to carry large presents. It was at this point that he informed me that he had called The Switch Witch and she told him that she would leave him THREE small presents in exchange for his candy. This kid does not mess around.

** Please note: Based on his wild imagination, stellar negotiation skills and the ability to screw you without you realizing, my son will likely become a used car salesman, hostage negotiator, or President of the US. **

After discussing all the above, Brady has agreed to make a deal with this Switch Witch, but we shall see what ends up happening come November 1. I will tell you one thing for sure– one way or another, all that candy is going into the trash because I have a feeling the loot is going to double in size this year and I am not interested in having any of my body parts doubling in size {bah dum dum dum}.

Does The Switch Witch visit your house after Halloween? What’s her story? Or, do you have any other tricks to deter your children from eating all that candy??