Posted on: Oct 11, 2021
Switch Witch sounds as though you should be switching places with the wicked witch of the north, or perhaps changing places with Maleficent, Ursula, Shakata, Razili, or Farida from your favourite Disney film.
But, no, what it is in fact, is a newer holiday tradition, started by two entrepreneurs from Salem, Massachusetts. The perfect place to be linked to witches!
Lara Riley’s four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, the family experienced a ‘switch’ in their lives. This switch meant, of course, being very careful about diet, sugar and behaviour around food – and all events where food and drink play a central role.
Laura wrote the book and realised that as a tradition, it would be a safe and fun solution for families in similar circumstances, and for people with food allergies – and those people, as you know, are also our people at Creative Nature. Laura also supports the Teal Project – and you can find out more about that in last week’s blog.
Switch Witch is Lara and her partners’ business designed for parents who don’t want to let their children eat all of the sweets they receive whilst trick or treating at Halloween.
The Switch Witch actually works like the tooth fairy. Instead of leaving a tooth under your pillow, you leave sweets for the Switch Witch to swap for a non-edible, fun present.
If you live in an area where you don’t know many people, or there aren’t many people who put out Teal Pumpkins then being able to switch out sweets for something else is a great idea.
How Switch Witch works
- Introduce the children to the idea of Switch Witch – you could create a backstory for her. After trick or treating, sort through the treats to see if there are any that are edible, or if they are all unsafe, in terms of possible allergen risks.
- You could swap a few food items for allergen-free sweets, or snacks, such as Gnawbles.
- Put all of the unsafe items on one side to trade in with the Switch Witch.
- Place the sweets into a bag for the Switch Witch and leave it in a specific spot that night. It might be by the back door for example.
- When the child is sleeping, the magic Switch Witch (you can even dress up) can trade the bag of sweets or treats which are unsafe or unsuitable – for something they’d like to have instead.
- The switch doesn’t have to be anything fancy! You can even give your child some ideas beforehand (at least a week) and maybe ask them to do a small ‘wish list’.
- Let the child find the item in the morning and enjoy it!
- Your gifts could be either something with a Halloween theme; useful stationery items; a book; or toys. Anything that your child would enjoy.
This is the perfect way to help your child to feel part of the Halloween tradition of trick or treating, but still keeping them safe from having a serious allergic reaction or a dip in their health or worse.
You can find out more about Switch Witch here.
You can find out more about our suitable Halloween treats here.