It’s a tricky matter, feeding kids. We want them to have fun and we want them to be healthy. Overindulge them on high-calorie, high-sugar foods and they’ll gain weight. Overly deprive them and as soon as they’re off our radar screen, they’ll overeat. So what do we do with Halloween?

Take the middle ground, suggests registered dietitian and one of my favorite common-sense, family-feeding authors, Ellyn Satter. Here are some of her suggestions:

¢ Use Halloween candy to help your child learn reasonable eating habits. “When he comes home from trick-or-treating, let him lay out his booty, gloat over it, sort it, and eat as much of it as he wants,” she suggests in her book, “Your Child’s Weight, Helping Without Harming.” Let him do this for a day or two. Then have him put his stash away and reserve it for appropriate times.

¢ Make Halloween candy a part of meals or snacks. To make this work, remember that snacks are not “treats” or “rewards.” They are little meals, explains Satter, presented to a child reliably and matter-of-factly. And here’s the clincher: Have your child sit at the table to eat snacks … not in his room in front of the computer or television.

¢ Concentrate on structure. Sure, an apple with peanut butter is a much healthier snack than a Snickers bar and a glass of milk. But if we maintain the structure of meals and snacks with all foods, says Satter, a child will learn how to regulate his intake.

¢ Treat Halloween treats as “controlled substances” not “forbidden fruit.” Have a strategy to manage those “wonderfully appealing, appallingly high-calorie foods,” explains Satter. Strictly forbidding any type of fun food can backfire and cause a child to overeat these foods.

¢ So how do we keep Junior from bouncing off the wall from all that sugar? “There is no reliable evidence that eating sugar causes children to have behavior problems,” says Satter. “However, hungry children have behavior problems. Eating sweets instead of something more substantial can soon leave a child empty – and cranky. Again, to keep your child from having that post-sugar emptiness and crankiness, reserve the sweets for meal and snack times and offer other foods at the same time. The other food will stay with her longer and keep her comfortable until the next feeding time.”