For some parents, the spookiest part of Halloween isn’t the scary movies or haunted houses—it’s trying to get kids to bed after they’ve eaten their weight in candy. With Halloween landing on a school night this year, balancing trick-or-treating with a normal bedtime routine might be a real fright fest. You don’t want to be a goblin about it, but you also don’t want them earning a tardy the next day.
Here’s some good news: Sugary candies might not be the curse that keeps your kids awake all night long on Halloween.
Here’s what you need to know about the impact of candy and excitement on sleep and a trick or two to get kids to settle down after all the spooky season excitement.
Halloween candy and sleep: What’s the connection?
According to some industry estimates, the average trick-or-treater eats about three cups of sugar on Halloween, which is 24 times the American Heart Association’s recommendation of less than six teaspoons. This surge of sugar can increase energy because when you eat sugar or simple carbohydrates, the body breaks it down into glucose. Then, your pancreas releases insulin to allow the body to use that glucose for energy, says Mikie Rangel, a registered dietitian at Children's Health in Dallas, Texas.
“As we are getting this burst of insulin, there can be a bump of energy. Paired with the excitement of the night, it can get kids restless at bedtime,” she says. “After a big surge of insulin, we can have a crash, which could affect overnight sleep from a drop in blood sugar.”
This is a lot of physical activity for the body to manage when it should be resting. But just how bad that is for kids’ sleep isn’t entirely clear.
“The relationship between sugar and sleep is complicated,” explains Roxanne Prichard, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. “The only aspect of diet that’s been linked to sleep problems in children is sugar-sweetened beverages, but they often have caffeine.”
A 2018 study, which looked at data on nearly 6,000 children, found that consuming sugar-sweetened drinks was associated with shorter sleep duration. However, not all studies on the subject are as conclusive. In fact, a 2017 study on 287 children ages 8 through 12 (a prime trick-or-treating age!) found that total sugar consumption did not have a relationship to behavioral or sleep problems. More research is needed before we can say for sure whether sugar is the enemy of slumber for kids.
Unexpected ways Halloween candy can impact sleep
Beyond causing a sugar high, Halloween candy may pose other potential risks to kids’ sleep. Research shows that eating too close to bedtime—whether candy or not—can cause nighttime awakenings and disrupted sleep. So, if your kids are still raiding their Halloween loot right before bed, their sleep might take a toll.
“You shouldn’t be hungry or full right before you go to bed. If you can get a couple of hours between a major meal and sleep time, that’s better,” notes Prichard.
Chocolate may also have a hidden, sleep-disrupting trick up its sleeve: caffeine. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a fun-size bar of chocolate candy has 3 mg of caffeine. That’s only a small fraction of the 96 mg of caffeine in a cup of coffee, but if your child eats several bars (or scarfs down a few mini bars of dark chocolate, which contains more than twice the amount of caffeine as milk chocolate), it could make it harder to fall asleep.
“Children are much more sensitive to caffeine than adults are,” says Dr. Thanuja Hamilton, sleep medicine specialist at Advocare Sleep Physicians of South Jersey.
Even if kids don’t eat much of their haul on Halloween night, just having that mountain of candy around can keep them buzzing with excitement. Seeing their candy stash and all the shiny wrappers can be as stimulating as eating it.
“It’s a cultural tradition: After trick-or-treating, you dump it on the floor, you organize it, it’s like a game. It’s fun, and it will probably delay bedtime,” says Prichard.
Halloween’s other spooky sleep saboteurs
While candy might be the prime suspect for a child’s poor sleep on Halloween, it’s not the only potential sleep saboteur. It’s probably not even the spookiest one!
“It’s the excitement of that day they’ve been looking forward to for months and the experience of going to haunted houses, dressing up, and trick-or-treating,” says Prichard. “A lot of that is emotionally evocative and stimulating and will have a bigger effect on sleep than the nutrient content of candy.”
The haunting themes of the night can affect sleep, too. Watching scary movies after a night of trick-or-treating can also present a couple of problems. First, the content of the movies could scare kids and make it hard for them to sleep. In one study on college students, more than half of participants said they had sleep disturbances in childhood after watching scary media (which isn’t even factoring in the effect of blue light from screens, which is known to affect circadian rhythm).
Being active later than usual and processing all that stimulation can delay bedtime as kids relive the night in their heads, Prichard adds. “A good bedtime routine is associated with quality sleep, whether that’s a bath and a story or a back rub and lights out. Those are the sensory signals that tell you to go to sleep,” she says.
How to help kids get great sleep on Halloween
Despite all of the excitement, there are some things parents can do to help their little unicorns and superheroes get quality sleep on Halloween night. Your work starts before your kids even put on their costumes.
“Make sure the kids are well fed and hydrated before going out to trick-or-treat. This will help limit the amount of sweets they eat,” says Hamilton.
Rangel recommends serving a pre-trick-or-treat dinner that will help them with sleep. This could mean a meal rich in protein and fiber, such as chicken with whole grain rice and a big salad or chili with beans, lean meat and veggies.
“That extra protein and fiber will stay in them a little longer, so they’re not coming home starving after trick-or-treating. Candy will just be an add-on to that,” she explains.
You should also take a similar approach once you get home to decrease the chances of kids filling up entirely on candy. “A small snack like a string cheese or handful of nuts after their big night out will help fill them and slow the absorption of sugar,” Hamilton notes.
She also recommends setting a “candy curfew,” which is the cutoff for when they can dive into their stash at night. “Decide with them when they will have the last treat and try to make it at least two or three hours before bedtime,” Hamilton says.
When it’s time to start winding down, put the candy out of sight, avoid screens, and get the kids back into their regular bedtime routine. That might include a warm bubble bath, cozy pajamas, a bedtime story, and switching off bright lights in favor of nightlights. It also helps to dim your house lights to deter trick-or-treaters so the kids aren’t amped by continued action at their front door.
Despite your best tricks and treats, getting kids to bed and sleeping soundly on Halloween will probably be a bigger struggle than usual. But don’t let it haunt you—one night of bad sleep won’t derail their whole routine. And for many families, the thrill of Halloween is worth a little midnight mayhem.
“Halloween and trick-or-treating are one of the fun, cool things we do to celebrate kids,” says Prichard. “It will be associated with phase delay in sleep, and that’s fine. It’s Halloween—that’s what you do.”
