Eggscellent Parenting on Display

With just a few days away, egg hunts are popping up all over town. But one Colorado town cancelled its traditional hunt this year after last year’s event was ruined by a pack of overzealous parents.

I’m sure the good people of Colorado Springs were collectively blushing last week when the Associated Press put this story out on the wire, telling the world that hundreds of children there wouldn’t get to pursue their rite of spring because of “the behavior of aggressive parents who swarmed into the tiny park last year, determined that their kids get an egg.”

The version of the story posted on NPR’s website describes the 2011 scene as follows: The “hunt was over in seconds, to the consternation of egg-less tots and their own parents. Too many parents had jumped a rope set up to allow only children into Bancroft Park in a historic area of Colorado Springs.”

It sounds like the event had started out as a small-scale neighborhood affair, intended only for a small group of families, but had become wildly popular over the years, outgrowing itself. But by several accounts, the curtain was drawn on the party thanks to the pushy parents who were laser-focused on trying to ensure that their kids got their fair share of eggs, so much so that the children themselves didn’t have a chance to seek the hidden eggs – which contained candy and prizes donated by local merchants – for themselves.

Everybody understands the impulse to want to step in and pave the smoothest possible way for your kids, but a parenting writer quoted in the AP story cautions that we should do our best to fight our hovering “helicopter parent” tendencies.

“They (parents) can't stay out of their children's lives,” said Ron Alsop, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of The Trophy Kids Grow Up, which examines the “millennial children” generation. “They don't give their children enough chances to learn from hard knocks, mistakes.”

This will be our first year taking the kids to an , so I can’t say how I will behave as I watch them vying with their peers for the hidden treats. Now that I have this story in the back of my mind, I’ll probably work extra hard to let them strike out on their own. I like to think that I’m not much of hoverer with Lucy, who is four, and Ike, who will soon be two. Then again, they are still so little that they need me and the other adults in their lives to hover for many of their basic needs that I suppose I have an excuse for now.

Parents, what do you think? Are fun activities like egg hunts a time to let your kids have a taste of disappointment over not finding the most eggs? Or will you do whatever it takes to make sure they have fun and feel successful? Tell us in the comments.