The Switch Witch

In light of the fact that Halloween is almost here, people should be aware of the Switch Witch, a most lovable of “good” witches. This post will be most interesting for parents, grandparents, and possibly even dental professionals.

This is they way she works (as I understand her): Your child does the normal costume-trick-or-treating thing. If your kids are like mine, they will come home with a sizable loot. First, parents should dump out the bag and throw out any “questionable” pieces of candy. Then, have your child pick out 10 or so pieces of candy that they really want to keep. I tell Maya (4) that she can have one per day for 10 days. The rest of the candy goes into a bag for the Switch Witch. Your child places the bag somewhere … outside the front door, back door, or even right outside his/her bedroom door. In the dead of night, the Switch Witch will take the bag of candy and switch it with a gift of some kind … last year my daughter got a bunch of stickers. Maybe this year she will get a new box of colored pencils or some coloring books … the possibilities are endless!

Now why does the Switch Witch want your kids’ candy? For Maya, the explanation was key. (Actually, she was 3 and a half last year during Halloween and this logic made perfect sense to her.) The Switch Witch WANTS bad teeth. She WANTS to eat as much sugar as possible because she LIKES her teeth to be rotten. At the same time, she knows sugar is bad for little kids’ teeth, so she is doing a good deed by taking the extra sugar from all the kids. She wants their sugar so badly that she’s happy to leave a little gift in return – In her mind, it’s a symbiotic relationship! And hopefully she keeps parents happy too … parents get to allow their kids to have some candy without overdoing it.

P.S. What did I actually do with the candy last year? I took it to work – the administration office where I teach has a big basket of candy to help teachers make it through the stacks upon stacks of papers to grade – funny how the basket is most full right after Halloween …