Halloween has been the most challenging holiday for our vegan family. While quite a bit of Halloween fun is fine for vegan kids (costumes, pumpkins, pumpkin patches, spooky decorations), the main event of trick or treating can be challenging. The following are some suggestions:
Sending your child out to ask for candy from the neighbors is challenging as many of your well-meaning neighbors will be handing out non-vegan treats. We do not want our little one to miss out on the fun of trick or treating and have tried our best to still make the night fun. Here are a few options:
1. Trick Or Treat Only to People You Know
This is sort of like a vegan candy crawl where you end up driving from neighborhood to neighborhood, only trick or treating to people you know. This works with friends who are not vegan if they are kind enough to put something vegan aside for your little one(s). This worked the best for us when our son was small and was happy with a few pieces of candy. We only trick or treated to people that we knew were giving out vegan treats. It was fun and festive as we visited with friends along the way. 
2. Research Events in your Community
Many communities are offering safe Halloween events for trick or treaters. While some of these will offer traditional candy, some might have more non-food items. You can call these events ahead of time and find out what they are giving out for treats. You might ask them if they have anything special for kids with allergies as some might have dairy-free alternatives. For example, two events in our community were mostly vegan-friendly.
The first was a Pumpkin Walk where kids trick or treated at stations along a decorated pathway of carved pumpkins. This event had mostly non-edible treats (like pencils or vampire teeth) with only a few stations with candy.
Another event was a trick or treat event at the Discovery Museum, a local children’s museum, where they gave out such wonderful treats as used books from a local bookstore, vials of colorful rocks, and small toys.
3. Trick Or Treat and Think of Things To Do With the Non-Vegan Candy
When our son turned 4, he really wanted to go door to door to trick or treat. So last year, we did venture out to our neighbors. I thought of going door to door and planting vegan candy with my neighbors, but decided that we were just going to have to face this one. He trick or treated at our house first, where I made sure he had quite a few vegan treats to full his basket. When we looked through the candy afterwards, quite a bit of the candy was vegan. His solution for the non-vegan candy was to make a picture with it. We always give our son the option that he can choose to eat non-vegan candy on Halloween if he wants to. That way he does not feel deprived and the choice comes from him. We try to make sure that if he makes the choice not to eat the vegan candy, that there are plenty of other vegan treats for him. Another good tip from a vegan friend who is a mom, is that her son trades his candy in to her, and they go to Whole Foods and pick out vegan candy.
In the future, there might be apps that help us to find the houses with vegan treats:) It looks like the people from Vegan Street are working on some Humane Halloween Resources.
Tater Tot Vegan Kids 