While trick-or-treating is intended for children, parents are often left candy-less.

Ask your average parent, and you’ll discover that they wind up eating a fair amount of their children’s trick-or-treating candy for a variety of reasons. From Snickers and Butterfingers to homemade cookies and even fruit, the average child trick-or-treating in an urban area for one hour will wind up with 20 lbs. of candy. Even the most generous, sharing kids will guard it with their lives and attempt to save it all for themselves, leaving you salivating and begging with your child for just a bite.

How can you cram some of that candy down your gullet?

The timeless idiom “stealing candy from a baby” is rarely taken as literally as it is during post-Halloween sugar cravings. You know that within your house—the house you’re paying the mortgage on, by the way—there lies dozens of candies. So, how do you eat it?

The most common method, at least for little kids, is to let them choose one piece of candy per day. You are in control of the bucket, which sits high atop the fridge or some other location. No child under six will ever notice a few pieces of candy missing, especially when they only get a good look at the bucket once per day. Even more likely is they will completely forget about choosing a Halloween candy after just three weeks, leaving you with the remainder of their bounty!

Other methods include:

• Be truthful. For one kid to eat 913 candy bars—even conservatively spread out over the course of a month or two—will be detrimental to their health. Not only will their teeth go to shit, they are likely to gain weight, putting them on an irreversible path to cardiovascular disease. Give the kid the health spiel, let them pick a few of their favorites, and discard the rest… directly into your own mouth!
• Teach (or remind) your child about sharing. Why should they get pounds of candy while you get none? Hopefully they will cave and share a few candies with you.
• There are needy or sick children who didn’t get to go trick-or-treating for one reason or another. Teaching your child about giving is a valuable lesson. If you want to skim some of their donation off the top for yourself, well, that’s something you’ll have to determine whether or not you can live with.
• Steal the candy when the child isn’t looking. Depending on how much candy your child accumulated, they may not even notice a Tootsie Roll missing here or there. Unless your child is a wannabe accountant and created an accounting ledger of all the candies, you’re probably going to get off scot-free.
• Have the child give you any items they don’t like. Adults and kids have different tastes, after all. A kid may hate coconut, and you can happily take all their Mounds bars.
• Just start eating their candy very openly. If they complain, just claim “Oh, sorry, I thought this was for everyone.”
• The easiest way, of course, is bribery. Trade an extra hour of video game time for a couple Heath bars!

Other ways to obtain trick-or-treat candy

If you fail to crack your kid’s candy safe combination, don’t worry. You can still get candy using these tried-and-true methods!

• Go trick-or-treating yourself, even if that means lying and claiming you’re just grabbing some candy for your shy child who won’t come up to the door.
• Go light on handing out candy at your own house so you’ll be left with plenty of leftovers.
• Purchasing candy from a store is easy for any adult with even a few dollars to their name. Look for day-after-Halloween discounts at your local marts!
• Post on Facebook asking if anyone has leftover or excess candy you can have. Unsubstantiated guesstimates show that 63% of all Halloween candy winds up being thrown out anyway.

My Hot Take

My four-year-old will head out this evening to collect candy dressed as Hulk, and I promise you I will wind up eating far more of his candy than him. I’m sure I’ll use a variety of these tactics, from bargaining to preaching about sharing to just outright stealing it.