Halloween, no matter how much I love it, brings drama in our house.  There is candy (which we don’t usually have much of except around holidays) and 1 boy who binges the minute he gets it, one boy who selectively eats his and one boy who stores it away.  The binger, after eating all of his candy the first hour he got it, can’t control himself and ends up stealing candy from the other two.  Stolen candy = drama.  We have tried the usual punishments (talking about it, writing sentences “I will not steal candy”, time outs with apologies, etc) but the lesson hasn’t seem to sink in.  Tonight that changed.
I was in the living room dealing with the babies, went into the kitchen to make dinner and I noticed that the bowl of candy corn was significantly lower than earlier in the day.  I asked if anyone knew anything about it…nope, it was a mystery!  I gave a second chance for the culprit to come forward, still nothing.  Time for the “candy corn in the teeth” test.  Trey failed the test.
Since the typical consequences were obviously not  working, we had to go another direction.  Trey was excited to learn that he was about to have CANDY FOR DINNER!!!  It was an exciting moment, the other boys begged for the same punishment….that is, until Trey had eaten a bunch and was clearly not enjoying his awesome punishment as much as he thought he would.   The pictures tell the story better than I ever could…I do believe my young son has learned a lesson.