I am banning community egg-hunts for my family from now on.
This is the third Easter with my kid, the first one where he can actually do stuff. (US post so obviously this is going to be about consumerism)
We were invited to a little church egg hunt from a family friend and were just like, hey why not? We were told to bring a basket and 6 eggs. Cool.
We get there and there’s maybe 12-15 kids, ages from 2-12. My son was the only 2 year old. I think that’s a good size and lets my son have some interaction with others. The church also was donated some eggs, so there were over EIGHT HUNDRED eggs just thrown in the yard. Plenty for a little dude to grab while the bigger kids go get the harder to get eggs, right?
1st mistake was they didn’t separate by ages, so all kids were out simultaneously. 2nd mistake was they were giving CASH prizes for the most eggs found?? I have never heard of this. The biggest thing I’ve ever seen was like a “prize egg” where one egg is filled with a few dollars. But I guess the cash prizes was just a thing for this place.
Anyways, my son was the first to go out just by where we were in line so he was able to grab 2-3 while the rest of the kids were foaming at the mouth to get outside. After that, every time he reached for a little egg some little 8-9 year old would snatch it from his fingers 🥺 I eventually said “hey. Let the baby grab a few eggs please” and the other parents would scoff and tell their kids to get them all. I should have been a bitch but I’ve never been here before and was invited by a church member.
There was thankfully a basketball court that had a fence and a few eggs just sitting on the court unnoticed, so not going to lie I had my husband close the gate and the older church lady that invited us was guarding the gate. The other kids saw my baby grabbing a few and swarmed like rabid zombies seeing the last surviving human and the older lady harshly said “THIS IS THE AREA FOR THE BABIES!” And glared at the parents. There were only 6 eggs in that area
My kid got a whopping 11 eggs. The top five kids all got over 100.
It wasn’t about the amount of eggs to me, but his little face as those jerks snatched them from a baby will stick with me for a bit. He looked up at me so confused and said “egg?” It almost made me cry, man. He was so happy with his little 11 eggs though, I think I’m going to go throw them in our yard after his nap just so he can go collect them again.
The “Easter bunny” is leaving eggs in the yard for him tomorrow so he doesn’t have to compete for them, but I really was hoping he’d get to go out and play with other little kids and enjoy it. I think I’m just going to do our own thing from now on and keep it between my kids and maybe the neighbors and my niblings. I can’t trust the general public to teach their kids manners and how to be unselfish