Juvenile Diabetes: How did you handle Halloween?

[Janeen]

Our Halloween with food allergies was not the best. In fact, my son ended up in the ER. We tried to be as careful as we possibly could be. But there are no guarantees.

This morning while perusing a few blogs I came across this post from Barb. It's mostly a sweet post from a mom and grandma talking about her family, but in it she mentions her grandson who has juvenile diabetes and how he can not have candy during Halloween. Because food allergies are close to my heart, I lost sight of the fact that there are other children who are affected by illnesses or issues during the holidays that can not celebrate in a "traditional" sense of the word.

Now many children with juvenile diabetes can have some candy if they are careful with other carbs and monitor their insulin levels very closely. But of course they can not eat ALL the candy like most children who do not have medical limitations. And then there are those who can not have candy either because their insulin levels are too unstable or because it is not within the parents comfort zone.

A few wonderful suggestions that I found are:

Trading candy for "points" from Parenting Special Needs from families.com

Making Halloween less scary for kids with Type 1 diabetes from JDRFI

Candy and carb breakdown from JUVENILE DIABETES RESEARCH FOUNDATION "MACEYS FAMILY": HALLOWEEN AND DIABETES on Facebook

Don't forget to have fun! from Diabetesaliciousness (tm)


If you or your child have diabetes, how do you handle holidays like Halloween where the main focus is usually on sugary sweets? Do you have any traditions that you started that your family love that don't involve candy? Do you or children feel left out? What's the buzz on this topic in your community? Please share your tips or take some of these links back to your community.

Head over to the Type 1 Diabetes Group to keep the conversation going.