On one hand you don’t want your vegan children to miss out on trick or treating and the experience the other children may have. On the other hand we know that when they go out trick or treating they’re going to get lots of different things that aren’t necessarily going to be vegan. So how do we host a vegan trick or treat event. In this article I’m going to share some ideas that I’ve had about how we can manage trick or treating for vegan children.
I’ve seen some suggestions around a “switch witch” where you go out as normal and just accept all the sweets and then go home and put them outside and then the witch comes and switches all the sweets that aren’t vegan ones and I suppose this works well for younger children. For older children maybe you can just agree a switch when you get home. Then you can give the items that aren’t vegan, that you’re not going to eat to a friend or family member.
However the only problem for this is I don’t really like accepting their sweets in the first place because by doing so they have to then be replaced and it also sends a signal to the people that I’m taking them from that I’m happy to accept non vegan sweets, when I’m not. I think this really depends on the age of your child and and how much they can understand about it as well but personally I don’t really like the switch witch idea. I think it has a few issues one being I’m having to accept non-vegan sweets I don’t agree with, the other being that I have to then give these non-vegan sweets to someone else which I’m not really happy to do either.
However having said that if this is something that you know your family feels comfortable with, I know different families have different situations. Sometimes the whole family is not a solely vegan family, so in which case it is not such an issue in our case the whole family is vegan so we just don’t like having non-vegan products anywhere around the house.
The other option which is what we do is my children would ask or they are of an age now when they know what is and isn’t vegan. So they would either decline and just not take any sweets and they’re perfectly happy to do that or they would pick the sweets that were suitable for them because often you have swizzle packs or some other accidentally vegan sweets.
I think this sends a message about dietary restrictions, and catering for everyone and as veganism grows it’s important to make people aware of our requirements and that vegans will not accept non vegan sweets.
Not because we are rude or ungrateful, but because it’s against our ethics. It’s important to decline respectfully and politely and I don’t feel this is rude.
I think it is worth pointing out that my children enjoy the process of dressing up and going out and walking around and seeing the decorations on the houses and actually I think the sweets are a secondary part and they’re well aware what they can’t eat and they have been from a very early age of what they can and can’t eat it’s not really been an issue for us I’ve always offered alternatives in our house when they get home.
What I do for Halloween, I buy a whole load a of sweets, so the kids aren’t missing out and they know that as well they can have all the sweets that they can and actually my kids are not big sweet eaters. So they’re not really fussed about getting the sweets they just like going round and looking at looking at the different houses.
I do think it’s a bit sad doing events like this with the children because they do make these choices. I’m very grateful for all vegan children who stand up for their values and make these choices and I’m very proud of my children being around all this temptation and actually not wanting it but they’re vegan for the animals they understand, that they don’t want to harm animals they don’t want to hurt animal so for them I’ve explained to them what gelatine is and to be fair gelatine is actually disgusting so they’re perfectly happy not to eat sweets containing gelatine or milk because equally they understand the horrors of how milk is produced.
But again depending on the age of your child this could be different and how you handle it might vary depending on the age of your child.
Another option is to pre-warn people for example if you have any relationships with the household you might be visiting if it’s neighbours, you may even want to go and drop round a packet of sweets and say when my kids come could you give them these because they are vegan and I don’t think that’s rude and as long as you’re not going to a house and saying make sure you get vegan sweets in for my children which is rude and expecting. Then you can plan to go round those houses and that way you mitigate all of the problems because you will then just visit the houses that you know Have got the vegan sweets in them.
From my experience when my children did go out and did refuse the sweets that the people were quite shocked and maybe they thought my children are being rude but but I think in most cases it actually made the adults stop and think. To me it’s a form of activism. When you have a child refusing sweets it’s not really normal behaviour of children it does pose the question why is this child refusing the sweets? And when my children just walked away, politely saying thank but I can’t eat those, you could tell that the people felt bad and maybe next year they will think think about that and they might even cater for vegan children next time. I’m not saying that they should have something in for them I’m not expecting as a vegan to get any particular vegan sweets or intentionally want people to feel bad but I do want people to at least think about the issue and maybe how we can ensure we are inclusive for all children. I have no expectations of my children getting any vegan sweets and hence why I purchase my own.
Another option is to post an example of accidentally vegan sweets in for example a village community or town community or street community page on Facebook. It doesn’t have to say these are the sweets you need to buy my children for Halloween it could just be something along the lines of did you know these sweets or options are suitable for both vegans and vegetarians, useful to know before Halloween. Then it is just a knowledge thing, most people are just not aware, so we are just sharing information.
If your children are going out with friends of theirs you could also collect it all up and at the end have an agreement to share it out between the children making sure to split out the vegan vs non vegan and maybe pack a few extra incase your child ends up with less. We did this once when we did a mixed Easter egg hunt with some vegan children with some non-vegan children we made sure that There was vegan snacks out there all the children hunted and then the parents then separated the chocolate at the end.
You could take your own bag around with you so the kids knock on the doors and then you give the kids sweets for every door that they go to.
The other option is to not celebrate Halloween by trick or treating, you could host your own party where you’re in control of all the food and I think for younger kids this is a great option. My kids only went trick or treating when they were aware it was a thing around age 6. Before then we celebrated Halloween at home with a party, crafts and yummy vegan food!
Either way I don’t think vegan children have to miss out on trick or treating I think it’s important to talk to your children about trick or treating and how it might be a slightly different experience for them being vegan and even get them to come up with suggestions of how we can deal with that.
I’m all for getting my children on board with the decisions that I make around veganism so that it doesn’t just feel like I’m imposing things on them that it’s also coming from them as well and I find that works really well in terms of them making their own choices and they always make the right choices for the animals because they are in this as much for the animals as I am.
In conclusion your children don’t need to miss out on trick or treating you can find a way that works for you and your family from the suggestions above or if you have any other suggestions we would love to hear from you in the comments below.