A Reflection Of Parenting: An Easter Story

This past weekend good friends of ours organized an Easter Egg Hunt out the back of their house. Their house backs on to the Kincardine Trails and is a perfect spot for such a fun Easter tradition. Our friends not only hide these eggs in great spots along the trails they loving filled over 70 eggs with special treats for the 10 kids in attendance. All the children arrived with baskets in hands and the parents armed with cameras and smiles to experience and capture the event mentioned. Our Easter adventure was cut short. While we began our hop down the bunny trail we passed a mother walking two dogs and an older child, I smiled and said “hello” and was not met with the same response, instead it seemed like she was high tailing it out of the trails, seconds later two little kids were following with bags and arms overflowing with Easter Eggs. To make matters worse the kids were also eating the candy then throwing the plastic eggs down the ravine!!! Yes, littering on our public trails. A friend stops the little girls and asked them if they found these on the trails, the answer was “Yes”. My friend then says to the mother, these eggs were hid for a family organized Easter Egg Hunt. The ‘Deliquent Mom’ responds with “They’re just kids and this is a public trail”. ‘Awesome mom’ then says “They are for our hunt and we’d like them back please.” ‘Deliquent Mom’ says, “If you want them back ask for them yourselves, I’m not making them give them back”. ‘Awesome Mom’ replies “Great Parenting”, and waits for something to happen. The little kids with the eggs give them back to our party. The kids! Not the mother! First of all, we totally feel bad for the little kids and we so would have let them have a couple of eggs. Second, this mother could have had a slew of amazing teachable moments here and she missed EVERY ONE of them. Let me break it down for her.
#1 – Upon seeing the eggs on the trail and the excitement in her kids’ eyes. A great teachable moment would have been: “Oh kids it looks like someone is having an Easter Egg Hunt make sure you don’t touch them because they are not for us. We’ll have an Easter Egg Hunt tomorrow, and it will be so much fun.” NOT here’s the dogs plastic poo bags fill up as much as you can.
#2 – Letting the kids eat the candy. (My goodness is she for real) That mother does not know who put that candy there. We teach our children to not take/eat candy from strangers and here she is letting them eat stranger candy, she had no idea what could have been laced in the candy or waiting for them at the end of the trail. She is darn lucky it was just us and not some pedophile.
#3 – Taking something that does not belong to you is STEALING, it does not matter if it is on public or private property, and she taught her kids it is okay to be thieves. It’s like if you go to the park and ride your bikes there, run off and go play on the climbers and you happen to not be sitting on your bikes, in her eyes those bikes are up for grabs, “They’re just kids and its public property, you ask them to give them back, I’m not going to”.

Shame on you ‘Deliquent Mom’ let this be a life lesson for you and remember karma has a way of working things out. However you still have time to be an Awesome Mom.

There I feel better now!
Marcia

P.S. I have sent a version of this note to the Editors of Kincardine News and Kincardine Independant.