For some parents, the horror 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. But even if you become the treat police and cut your kids off from sugar-fueled frenzy, you might have other slumber-disrupting monsters to contend with. After all, the sugar lurking within your kids’ trick-or-treat haul is just one of many things that could make it hard for them to drift off on Halloween.
The good news is that Halloween isn’t on a school night this year, so at least the kiddos won’t need to power through homeroom on even less sleep than usual. Still, here’s what you need to know about the impact of Halloween candy and All Hallow’s excitement on sleep, with a trick or two to get kids to settle down after all the spooky-season antics.
Halloween candy and sleep: What’s the connection?
If it feels like your kids are bouncing off the walls after a few fun-size candy bars, you’re not imagining things. 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 for the body to process 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,” she added, explaining that since those beverages often contain caffeine as well, it can be difficult to determine what’s causing the sleep troubles.
Generally speaking, diets with relatively low sugar intake are associated with better sleep, although more research is needed. A 2023 cross-sectional study, which looked at data on more than 213,000 adolescents, found that those who consumed fewer sweets and soft drinks were less likely to have sleep difficulties. A more recent review from 2025, which evaluated the results of 21 studies on sugar intake and quality of life in children, found links between consuming added sugar (either in foods or beverages) and poor sleep quality, including shorter sleep duration. It did note that one prospective study found no association between sugar and sleep duration, though, so more research is needed before we can say for sure whether sugar is the direct hindrance on 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 any other food — can cause nighttime awakenings and poorer sleep quality. This is because, name similarties aside, active digestion prevents their body from entering the “rest and digest” mode that’s so important for getting sound slumber. 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 tally up a few bite-size bars, plus that king-size candy bar they scored at trunk-or-treat night, or some dark chocolate (which contains more than twice the amount of caffeine as milk chocolate), and that buzz could start to stand in the way of bedtime.
“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 possessing that mountain of candy can create excitement. Seeing their candy stash and all the shiny wrappers can be as stimulating as eating it, Prichard explains.
“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.
More clues about this could be found in a 2023 study on 546 toddlers. While it didn’t look at Halloween candy specifically, the study evaluated how a child’s home environment affects sleep. The researchers found that sources of stimulation around the home, such as noise and clutter, were linked with poorer sleep outcomes in young kids. So a mountain of candy spilling out of a trick-or-treat bag in their bedroom could indeed be stimulating enough to keep them up at night, even if they’re not eating it.
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 programming.
More recent research suggests that sleep-disrupting fears can linger well beyond Halloween. A 2025 review on sleep-related fears in children found that nighttime anxiety itself (such as worries about the dark, monsters under the bed, or going to sleep) can interfere with healthy sleep behaviors. Add in a scary scene from a horror flick, and bedtime can feel even more intimidating for kids who are already on edge.
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.
- Hydrate: “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.
- Nourish: 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. The key is to fill them up with enough of nutritious foods that they don’t feel quite as enticed by gobs of candy. “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.
- Sustain: 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.
- Limit candy: While no one wants to play candy cop, setting a “candy curfew”—the cutoff for when they can dive into their stash at night—can help make bedtime much easier on Halloween, she adds. “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.
- Stick to the routine: 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 with Halloween falling on a Friday, the best treat of all might be letting everyone sleep in a little on Saturday morning.
“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.”
