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Greedy parents ruin Easter egg hunt leaving kids in the dust
By Kathianne Boniello March 27, 2016 | 10:15am

Greedy parents ruined Easter in Connecticut, violently shoving kids to the ground to snatch up all the eggs for themselves during a chaotic holiday event.

More than 9,000 eggs were hidden on three separate fields for families to find Saturday in the third annual Easter hunt at the PEZ Visitor Center in Orange.

But parents blew off the staggered start times, designated by age group, and rushed the fields, tearing down the posted rules and leaving bewildered youngsters in tears.

“Shame on that parent that broke the little boy’s bucket causing him to lose the few eggs he had, that someone else then picked up. Shame on the person that bloodied another child’s nose and to those of you that hogged all the eggs for your own kids,” mom Lisa Stahl wrote on the candy company’s Facebook page.

“If anyone is to blame for what happened today it’s the parents who tore down the signs and those that encouraged the kids to go from field to field instead of staying in their designated area,” she fumed.

Mom Val McCormick quipped online that the family event “was worse than being at Wal-Mart on Black Friday.”

The free event drew more attendees than the center’s small staff could handle, but it was the behavior of the adults that drew outrage.

“Grown adults pushing 3 & 4 year olds [sic] to get plastic eggs with some PEZ candy inside,” one mom wrote on Facebook. “This is how truly pathetic society has become. We watched the same thing occurring for all age groups. I guess even 9 year olds can’t pick up their own eggs.”

PEZ lamented that it “only wanted to do good for the local community” and that staffers “were on hand trying to talk with as many people as we possibly could, letting them know if someone
didn’t get an egg or candy, we had plenty of candy at the front entry for them.

“Due to the actions of a few, the good intent quickly turned into a mess,” the company said in a statement.

New York Post

What in the hell is wrong with people?

the every man for himself mentality.

surprise surprise.

It's more than an every man for himself mentality. I can kind of understand that mentality if you are in the desert and running out of water... this was an easter egg hunt for kids and the parents were so worried their kids weren't going to get their share... that they decided to do it for them.

This is all about protecting the self-esteem of their kids since I'm sure most of them could afford to buy their damn kids some PEZ if that's what the problem was... Not to mention, there was plenty of PEZ at the sign-up table if you wanted more..

I would say it had to do with the "free" stuff. People wanted free stuff. They broke the rules, they got aggressive, and they put a stain on themselves. "Free" stuff can turn people weird.

Never let a good deed go unpunished.

then i'd be interested in wondering where the parents got this mentality from.

this just doesn't appear out of thin air.

Maybe the parents just got done listening to a Pervie Sanders speech and expected a bunch of free stuff.

possibly. who knows.

It has been a progressive change from generation to generation. With each generation moving farther from "teaching your kids how to deal with disappointment" to "making sure your kids never feel disappointment"...

If you want to blame the parents of the parents, I'm sure that's a part of it.... culturally we have been shifting for a long time but, and this is just my opinions, over the last 20 years or so, that shift has been accelerated..

What has changed is we are now entitled to our share.

Never went an organized egg hunt either as a child or as a parent . I had a blast doing that for my daughter every year . She always wanted a scavenger hunt to find her basket as well . Parents that do this must be some lazy people

Trust me 40, the fact that this happened in a rather liberal state... and the state that ranks 4th in the United States in income.. and we are talking about a couple dollars worth of candy isn't lost on me.

you're probably right.

people aren't gonna agree with me, but generation + technology available = changes in culture dynamics.

technology has made everything insanely easier, especially factoring in your 20 year bubble.

i had a talk with my grandmother a few weeks ago at the cleveland botanical garden. she was giving me a lecture on parenting, and was telling me how the environment my dad raised me in was still way easier than how she raised my dad, even with our struggles.

then she started telling me the environment i raise my daughters in would've been completely unfathomable in her time.

she mentioned a ton of things, but one thing she said was that us parents today have so much access to our kids lives and social networks(friends and associates) than what could be only dreamed of in her time.

for example: she said kids back then had to respect what their parents told them about the world, typically only being exposed to a mass amount of different perspectives after high school. Now, she's concerned because kids today can look on their phones and call BS to what their parents are teaching them.

she said my generation is insanely smarter, but the consequence is we've become more disrespectful.

Ah, the easter egg hunt. What memories. Getting up early. Coloring raw eggs. Hiding them in the area where the egg hunt was supposed to take place. Good times.

Soccer moms.

oh you me the original gangsters in popping opiates during the day?

LOL........yeah, something like that.

Well............a friend of mine PMed me and asked me to post my thoughts [as a teacher] about this particular situation.

I hate to make set evaluations w/out having all the information. A part of me questions the validity of the story. Are there really any people on earth that screwed up? I thought it might just be some mother defending her sissy child by making crap up, but the organizers of the event were also quoted. Damn man.......all that for some cheap candy?

I can tell you all this: as a teacher, I have seen that those who come from the highest income families and those that come from the lowest income families are the ones that feel the most entitled. They are the least likely to share. They are the ones most prone to not play fair.

I believe that the offenders in this case probably came from one of the two groups. I kinda doubt they were from middle class families. We're the schumcks who break our freaking backs every day so the other classes can ream us.

Seriously y'all..........think about if we had our kids out there. Well, first of all.......I wouldn't have taken my kids to that place, but..........let's just pretend. I'd have the mindset of don't hog all the candy, son. Then, I would be like......don't let that kid push you around. Play fair.

Trouble is............there are people in our midst that do not want to play fair. They wanna hold people down. We see it in regards to race. We see it in regards to neighborhoods. We see it in the blame game. We see it in stereotyping. Rarely, do we see anyone present solutions.

I am not doing a good job of answering the question my bro asked me to weigh in on. I'm sorry. I just know this, y'all....

...Parenting is a huge responsibility. I believe that we should all raise our children to respect themselves and others. I believe they should not expect anything to be handed to them. However, I believe they should know they have the right that they can achieve whatever it is that they set their minds to. I believe in fair play. I do not believe in hogging all the rewards. I do not believe in sticking your hand out. I do believe in working hard to earn what you get and to not be hindered in that attempt by the entitled.

And if you think about it.........that story that DC posted is a microcosm of our society.

And you know what kills me, y'all.....................us hard working mother........., are actually the majority and the people that make this country succeed.

And yet, we let these entitled people steal our candy.

Your grandma sounds like a very smart lady.. like most grandmas.

Things are definitely accelerating, all things, the good and the bad. I read somewhere that technology doubles every 7 years. I have no idea how you measure such a thing, but things are changing much faster.

I agree with your grandma that we have this technology access into our kids lives but at the same time, they are working as hard to hide their on-line presence from us as we were trying to hide the Penthouse or the condoms or the 5th of Jack or the bag of weed.. whatever it was with you.

[quote]for example: she said kids back then had to respect what their parents told them about the world, typically only being exposed to a mass amount of different perspectives after high school. Now, she's concerned because kids today can look on their phones and call BS to what their parents are teaching them.[/quote
I agree with that 100% but I don't look at it as calling BS on your parents.. when I was a kid, my parents were my biggest influence, followed by grandparents, teachers, coaches, friends, etc. and I lived in a small town, we were, as I've described before, a fairly homogenous group and the values were similar... so yes, I was 18 years old before I was exposed to the rest the world had to offer, my values were pretty well set. Kids now are exposed to so much, so of it good but a tremendous amount of it bad starting early, like 7 or 8 when they first start using the internet, then even greater around middle school which is usually when most get a cell phone... I look at it more as undermining what you are trying to teach your kids than calling BS on the parents... in the end though, it still comes down to WHAT you are trying to teach your kids.

What a sad story.

Easter is the greatest sacrifice one man ever made for another, with Jesus taking the sins of others onto Himself, dying as a result of the sins of men, and being resurrected into glory, showing the way to eternal life for all ......

And this is how some treat the celebration of His amazing love.

Truly sad.

That's it if they do it again next year we all need to count to three to make them stop.

Oh Hell with that I say we grab the belts and paddles and use them on the parents NOW. Then we won't have that problem next year.

Sometimes when I read this... I wonder if it's true that adults, during an event like that, would act like that. Those poor kids.

I think every parent there should serve some community service.

A good time was had by all, except for them kids getting in the way!

people are becoming more and more pathetic

"Fire in the Hole!"

Could you imagine the above scene if "One of the eggs Contains a $100 bill".

It would be nice to have video of this event.

I don't believe any parent would intentionally push or hurt another child. I'm not defending their actions, whatever did happen, but I'd like to see more evidence before believing a Facebook user that states someone broke a child's egg bucket on purpose, another bloodied a kids nose, and many parents were pushing kids.

Parents can be jerks, but this does sound rather exaggerated.

Nothing surprises me anymore. The last time my wife & I took our kids to an Egg hunt was about 20 years ago & it made me not want to do it again. Our 3 kids were probably 8 6 & 3. The local VFW or American Legion was hosting the event.

They always did a very nice job with lots of eggs portioned off in 3 age groups. You saw some adults being aggressive (not the norm) but the thing that ticked me off the most was after the hunt, when everyone was invited inside for hot dogs and other snacks.

You got in line for food but it went pretty fast. A kid next our table asked his grandfather if he could get another hot dog after having been through line once (no issue at all with this). The grandpa said OK & the kid started to go to the back of the line (obviously some people had not been through yet) which was polite of the kid and the grandfather yelled at him to skip the line because he had already gone through it once He told him to push his way into the front and just grab another. I wanted to leave right away at that point

I read Vers's ideas regarding the behavioral trends and the "theory" of low income & high income individuals acting this way or expecting their entitlements. My experience of this that I noticed was only on the poor end of the scale. The wealthy people in our area tend to be very giving, both of their time and good fortune. Now, saying that, I live in a small town & the county population is only 38,000 so it obviously is not the norm.

Who knows the true cause, but I don't see it getting better.

My theory of this type of behavior is a result of entitlement. I don't know if it is governmentally induced or from parents/family. Probably a combination.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTTxDWZcbxI[/video]

I think he's looking for live video of parents running amok because, you know, in 2016, if it wasn't captured on video, then it didn't happen.

The one that got me from one of the articles I read, a woman was complaining that PEZ didn't have enough staff to maintain order and she drove 2 1/2 hours to get to this event and it was cancelled after the melee.

So, 1, who drives 2 1/2 hours just to get some free candy at a PEZ easter egg hunt?... and 2, shouldn't parents be expected to self-police at an easter egg hunt? Do we need security?

Un-freaking-believable... I totally thought this Was a fake story... I took my boys to our church Easter egg hunt which was crazy enough. I personally like the family only Easter egg hunts in the back yard with cousins... But our church had a bunch of back houses and eggs set up so wife and I wanted to go... That was crazy enough with the kid gather eggs up in a manner of minutes. My 3 y/o didn't get any because he got scared of the air horn (he has very sensitive ear) but at least it wasn't because of any parents pushing him over. Another little kid actually shared some eggs with him since he was too slow to start.

There Jimmy! NO THERE!!! Cut in front of that skinny kid wit the gimpy leg, he won't do nuttin!

Oh look, a wallet. What a day of days we had.

We did an Easter Egg hunt in Germany one time on base and saw similar crap. It was a horrible experience and we didn't go back the next two years.

Yeah, I watched that clip too. Nothing there. I'm not saying I need visual proof of an adult punching a kid in the face...but if someone says a kid got a bloody nose from an adult and yet nobody was arrested, was that bloody nose a punch or on accident? I'm not going to scream that all of these parents need to be castrated without a better explanation.

I could see someone falling on a kids bucket because they tripped, other kids see eggs grabbing them and then it's framed as "parents crushes kids bucket to teach lesson, lets other kids steal eggs while they watch."

I'm sure it wasn't as innocent as that, but I'd be willing to bet it's also not as bad as anyone is saying too.

i mean, at least start fighting the other parents to make it interesting. if you're gonna do that to kids, might as well make it as massive brawl.

that's how communities are brought together.

I'm sure it was, by definition, an accident. But as I tell my kids all the time, there are accidents and then there are preventable accidents.

Having a glass slip out of your hand and crash on the kitchen floor is an accident.. having a glass slip out of your hand and crash on the kitchen floor because you had 3 other things in your hands and were playing with your cell phone with the other hand... that's a preventable accident.

My guess is the kid accidentally got his nose bloodied by an overaggressive adult who was pushing his way through a group of people because he had to have that $.50 piece of candy in that plastic egg that he saw.

It occurs to me that the kid who sees another kid without any candy, who stops and gives that kid some of his, understands what Easter is all about more than any of these parents do.

Jesus came to this earth, was born a human child, and sacrificed His life for the forgiveness of sin. His sacrifice ensures that all who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

While a child sacrificing a piece of candy may pale by comparison, it shows that they (and really, their parents) either understand what Easter is all about, or do not.

We had 20,000 eggs and thousands of kids at our Easter gathering. Zero problems.

Could just be the people who would go to one at the PEZ company might be more prone to pushing and shoving than in other environments.

Not sure if I completely agree with this. I teach in a school that is over 70% free and reduced. 3/4 of the students are poverty, low income, high percentage of foster care etc. Our district does an annual Canned Food Drive and Cancer Awareness charity and our school continuously raises more cans and money for the Food Bank than the middle class and rich schools in the districts. Imagine that....kids with very little raising more money for Food Bank and more $$ for Cancer charities? Yes, it happens. I see kids who are hungry who go out of their way to raise money for others who are equally hungry.

Is there entitlement? Sure, but, I think that is a cultural thing rather than a class issue. Having taught in two states and two countries I have seen Entitlement across the spectrum and I have seen it not just with Americans (we are often accused of it by other nations). What I will say about teaching kids in a different country...yes, the wealthy were entitled but, the poor less so. However, in the USA I see entitlement across all social classes. So that, I believe, IS an American thing.

My church just acted as a storage/distribution center for a food drive that took place at the Struthers City Schools. The Middle School alone provided a room full of food for the drive. It was just incredible to see all of the bins of food in that room. The Struthers City Schools are among the best in Ohio, and their families are mainly middle class. I cannot find a number for the middle school, but the high school has roughly 550 students.