The Thrill of the Easter hunt

It shouldn’t have to be written down, but adults apparently need to learn the number one rule of Easter egg hunt etiquette: Grown-ups, please leave the eggs for the kids.

The region’s biggest egg extravaganza – 50,000 colorful plastic orbs and about $8,000 in prizes at Dave Smith Frontier Sales in Coeur d’Alene – has been canceled this year after last year’s fiasco. According to organizers, a number of adults last year made a mad scramble for the eggs.

“We were so scared that some little kid was going to get stomped to death,” said Joe Orsi, the car dealership’s general manager.

Instead of staying behind and allowing the children to enjoy the Easter time tradition, these parents and other adults rushed pass the barriers and started stomping on eggs in search of spare change and coupons for toy prizes. One woman brought a giant garbage bag that she stuffed unabashedly, recalled Orsi.

“The kids were very good – they were lined up around the ropes,” he said. “But when we said go, the adults just about ran over those kids.”

With Easter less than a week away, we asked parents and other readers of the Spokesman-Review’s Parents’ Council blog about where to go for egg hunts and the unwritten rules of etiquette. We also turned to egg hunt organizers at churches, community organizations and other groups for advice on how to make sure children don’t go home with their feelings hurt.

Traditionally, egg hunts are rather tame events that involve a few kids in someone’s backyard.

These days, however, some families choose to bring their children to larger gatherings at parks, churches and other locations. In most cases, there’s actually very little “hunting” involved since the eggs – usually plastic and sometimes color-coded so that kids of a certain age pick only orbs of a particular color – are scattered throughout the field. Kids also pick up eggs in age-designated areas to help even out the playing field.

Sure, it gets a little competitive at times – parents certainly expect that. But who knew it would be the grown-ups who would pose the biggest risk?

For the past four years, employees at Dave Smith spend months volunteering to fill thousands of eggs with candy and a little change – usually a quarter, dime or nickel. Some eggs also contained coupons for prizes such as Barbie dolls, Easter egg baskets, games and other toys and trinkets for kids.

About 3,000 people came last year. And although organizers divided the hunt into three different sections based on the children’s ages, it made little difference to the big people who ignored volunteers’ pleas to stay outside the fenced areas.

“It’s a shame when adults ruin it for the children,” said Orsi. “Everybody was just appalled. We were so afraid of the liability that we just canceled it this year.”

Instead, the car dealership donated $5,000 worth of candy to the egg hunt sponsored by Real Life Ministries in North Idaho.

While children often can’t resist the lure of a hunt featuring prizes and thousands of brightly colored eggs, some parents and other adults consider them too much of hassle. So they prefer to host smaller and mellower versions at home, where kids don’t have to compete for prizes.

“We found that there really wasn’t much etiquette at the big hunts and often it was because the adults were so pushy,” said Jennine, a reader of the Parents’ Council blog. “That took a lot of the fun out of it.”

But for those still eager to take part in the larger-scale hunts, the good news is that most remain safe and enjoyable for children.

“We just make it clear that kids need to do it themselves and we keep the adults out of there,” said J.P. Jones of the Carpenters Local 98, which organizes the annual egg hunt at Franklin Park in north Spokane. “We’ve had some overzealous parents, but we haven’t had any problems.”

For the last seven years, union members and other volunteers have prepared at least 6,000 eggs for the event, which is free for kids ages 1 through 12. The gathering draws about 250 kids every year.

To keep the littlest ones safe during the mad rush for eggs, organizers use a four-foot-tall orange safety fence to divide the various age groups. The fence also ensures that the parents and other adults stay off the field.

“We take the littlest kids and keep them far away from the biggest kids,” Jones explained.

Volunteers also keep a few extra eggs and candy in case there’s a child out there who couldn’t retrieve any treats. The hunt, after all, is usually over in just minutes.