Yesterday, we attended a lovely community festival including the highly-anticipated Easter Egg hunt. My children, per usual, were 
armed with their plastic grocery store bags (I am gonna have to really dig in my storage bins to find their actual baskets.)
The sun was shining, everyone was thrilled to be outside without a jacket, and there were activities galore. At 2:00pm, the eggs were laid out and ready for little hands to do the grabbing.
I walked with my six and four-year-olds (soon to each be one year older) to the perimeter of the hunt, letting them know I’d be watching and would be there waiting at the end of the hunt. (My nine-year-old was at the hunt for “big kids” and knew we’d meet up afterwards.
Whispering in my six-year-old son’s ear, “Please don’t take too many eggs, and be careful not to be too rough around the little kids,” I smiled feeling that he was armed with the moral high-ground knowledge any young egg-hunter needs in his tool belt.
When the ribbon was removed and the word “GO!” was heard, I noticed an interesting site: even though these kids were ages four to six, many of the parents were hunting right along with them, feverishly ensuring that their child received their just-due of goody-filled pastel-plastic eggs.
This surprised me, because although I had also held their hands and walked alongside them as toddlers, this year I just didn’t feel the need to, especially after reading a story like the one on NPR.org where Colorado parents jumped the rope at their Easter egg hunt, ultimately cancelling this annual event.
Call it “helicopter,” “millenial” or just plain “annoying,” these parents are doing their children a disservice. After all, we won’t be there for every competition, and that’s essentially what an Easter egg “hunt” is.
Can we ask them to share with other children, should their basket be overflowing while others have little? Absolutely, and we hope that our advice comes to fruition.
The truth is, other kids will get more than they do sometimes, and sometimes they will be the ones holding the prize. As adults, we see others with bigger homes, nicer cars, and more money in the bank. It doesn’t mean that their lives are any better than ours. It’s a fact that we all live with. No matter how fortunate we are (and I believe I’m among the very fortunate) there are tons of people I know that have more than I do, if we’re strictly counting possessions.
This is what we call life, and as my parents always taught me, life isn’t fair.
