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The annual community Easter egg hunt in Colorado Springs, Colorado has been cancelled. It wasn't about lack of funding, or interest, or a shortage of dyes; it was about the poor behavior of the parents.
They had pushed and shoved and shouted and hollered so much that the organizers couldn't face another year of an Easter egg hunt that had come to resemble something more akin to* The Hunger Games* than the friendly antics of Peter Rabbit. How unbecoming, I thought. How ugly. And finally: how sad.
I remember the last community egg hunt I took my son to, when we lived in Florida. In my memory, it's a bit like the parental melee described in Colorado Springs. Neither my son nor his friend were able to pick up a single egg, while nearby children danced maniacal jigs over their brimming baskets. Volunteers, armed with bullhorns and a sincere desire to play nicely, waded through the crowds, exhorting children to share and laying down the law on the rule of only one plastic egg (with prize coupons) per child.
It wasn't a Faustian scene. I saw plenty of parents begging their children to share, demanding that they put down the extra plastic eggs, and engaging in that time-worn dialogue of the teachable moment. "But why?!" "Because it's not nice!" "But why?!"
Neither was it a Utopian fantasy in which all parents and children were similarly engaged in the difficult process of parenting and growing, learning the golden rule through object lessons. There were plenty of parents breaking the rules, stepping over the ropes, and pointing their children toward the painfully obvious neon orange egg nestled in the grass *right there. *
Why do we do this? And not just this, the bad behavior at an Easter egg hunt, but all of this. The redshirting, the rageful parents in the sports world, the helicoptering, the spelling bee obsessives, and the tiger moms? I watched, with a feeling akin to grief, a 60 Minutes segment in which a mom spoke almost desperately of her desire to make her son the biggest one in the class, a leader, dominant over the other children, by holding him back a year.
What drives us to forsake our fundamental values as parents? At heart, I like to think that however diverse our backgrounds, we share some common goals and values. Most of us can sign on to the following:
- We have a duty to our children to help them succeed in the world.
- We owe our children the best we have to offer, even when our best is not as good as our neighbors'.
- Children deserve our respect as individual human beings with their own sense of volition and value.
- Parenting at its best is a thoughtful process, open to new ideas, driven by a conscious sense of purpose.
Fear is the only thing I know that has the power to turn good parents away from the careful, reflective human beings they once were. Fear of failing our children and fear of our children failing. Fear that someone else is getting all the best resources and fear that, in a bad economy, there is no more room to share. Fear that the cost of giving someone else a leg up will result in the loss of all personal advantage.
This fear has a price, and the price, I think, is greater than any of us should be willing to pay. Fear robs us of the profound joy of living in the moment with our children, of experiencing, with guidance and nurturing, the vicissitudes of life that are found in the most ordinary of days. By not letting our children come in last, play on a losing soccer team, grieve the tiny deaths of a bucketful of sea monkeys, we forfeit opportunities of bonding and growth. When we fight to make sure our kids get ahead, just a little bit more than anyone else, we steal from them the greatest joy of all: reveling in the pleasure of self-accomplishment and earned glory.
Fear-based parenting twists our thinking and warps our behavior. It is as fatal to the simple joys in life as it is detrimental to our children's greater good. I asked my son what he remembered from that last egg hunt, and he quickly responded, "running through the forest." After a pause, he added, "and I didn't get anything." Yes, he remembered, and no, he isn't damaged. He's fine, and all of the other children will be fine too.
It's time to let go of the fear.
