The day after Halloween I practiced a parenting technique I like to call "teaching children to self-regulate." I like to call it that, because it sounds better than "taking the easy way out so that everyone will be quiet and leave Mama alone when she is tired and sick."

Most of us remember from our own childhoods, or (if we were severely deprived by our mean parents) our friends childhoods, the bacchanalian debauchery, the candy carnival, the sugary ecstasy that surrounds Halloween. I remember coming home after a night of childhood trick-or-treating and dumping my haul of candy out of my orange plastic pumpkin onto the floor. It sat there in a beautiful mountain of brightly colored wrappers: slick, shiny and delicious. I would sort it first, from most desirable (Milky Way bars) to least desirable (those tan, vaguely peanut flavored taffy that came wrapped in orange or black waxed paper). I always gorged myself on the most desirable candy first, all in one day, and then let the icky taffy sustain me when there was nothing left, but I simply had to have candy anyway.

I know plenty of parents who take the hard road these days and limit their children's Halloween candy intake to one or two pieces a day. I admire these parents, because I can't even limit my own candy intake to that degree. As I type this I am eating at least my seventh Tootsie Roll today. (Those things are tasty!) I feel like I "should" teach my children (ok, my daughter, since I'm thrilled that my son even tried candy this year) restraint by limiting their access to candy, but this year I decided to try a different technique, one that worked on me, at least as far as Swedish Fish are concerned...

Yep, I let my daughter just go for it. I let her dive into that pumpkin in all her unbridled greed and desire. I let her eat candy at will, reminding her all along that it was going to make her sick. I put out healthy food, which she rejected in favor of mounds of candy. She ate candy for breakfast, lunch and snacks, and I would have let her eat if for dinner too, if we had gotten that far. Around 5 p.m. Thursday, cranky from lack of sleep and high on a day long mix of sugar and artificial flavors and colors, my daughter completely melted down in the kitchen where I was cooking dinner. She threw a huge crying fit and then vomited a spectacular chocolaty pool filled with colorful gummy bits onto the floor.

Then she ran of cheerfully to play with her brother, telling him that she had eaten too much candy and it made her sick. She ate her dinner, went to bed on time, slept through the night, and has limited herself to a single piece of candy (at most) per day since then. No more whining about candy. I taught her self-regulation through my excellent parenting. And I totally planned it that way; it didn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm sick, exhausted and took the easy way out to make my daughter quit whining about candy. I'm just that good at my job.