Mum Diary: Please Don't Buy My Children Chocolate This Easter

It’s Easter! Back in the BC years (‘before children’), my husband and I used to lose this long weekend to sleeping, gardening and watching box sets. Oh, and drinking wine in the garden, even if it was freezing – there are some things you’re just meant to do at Easter.

Since children all that has changed. We’re now going to spend the long weekend exploring one of the Forestry Commission’s Superworm trails, moving the boys’ seedlings into growbags and eating a massive Sunday lunch with some friends.

Of course, I say ‘eating a massive Sunday lunch’, but we all know that children don’t tend to eat much real food on Easter Sunday.

It’s the day when they get given so much chocolate that they need a bin liner to store it all in. Last year my boys received five Easter eggs each and most of Olly’s were bigger than his one-year-old head.

I don’t mind family giving the boys eggs; they have some seriously dedicated grandparents and I think it’s a grandparent’s job to be a never-ending source of sweets and treats.

But friends, neighbours, distant relatives, pre-school, school friends’ parents and toddler groups – I don’t want to sound like Captain Buzzkill, but they don’t need to all give my children eggs.

Because then I have to police those eggs and you may as well try telling Smaug he’s not allowed any more gold until next week, except my children are likely to be even louder.

So that’s the other thing I will spend my Easter doing: policing.

I Don’t Want To Be The Chocolate Police
What should you do when your toddlers have a bin bag full of chocolate eggs that they know belong to them? Do you let them binge on chocolate for the whole day but then surreptitiously share out what’s left among the grownups when they are in bed?

The alternative is to let them have a small amount each day until they assume that sweets and chocolate are something they are allowed seven days a week. Good luck when the chocolate runs out.

Of course, I could stick to my guns and allow them to eat a bit of egg once a week, when they usually have their sweets. But with the vast quantity of eggs they tend to score, we’ll still be eating them by Halloween.

Am I THAT Parent?
There’s a possibility that you’re reading this and thinking that I am –that– parent. You know the one, the parent who refuses all sweets and gives their kids rice cakes as a ‘special treat’. The parent who hands out apples or mini tubes of toothpaste at Halloween.

Or perhaps you are reading this and judging me for letting my boys receive 10 eggs between them. Pretty much every week there’s a new study showing how much sugar is in our diets and how bad that can be for us.

Really, though, I am in the middle on this issue. I don’t think my boys should never be allowed sweets. I don’t think my boys should eat five massive Easter eggs in the space of a week.

But I don’t know how to find a middle ground when everyone buys every child they know a vast chunk of chocolate all on the same weekend.

Okay… Alternatives?
There are alternatives, many alternatives. I am buying the boys Playmobil eggs, which are just £4 at the right supermarket. They get the Easter egg excitement plus a toy that lasts and there’s no chocolate to worry about.

And there are loads of Easter-themed treats you can give kids this time of year without ramming chocolate and sweets down their throats. Bonnets to decorate, stickers to play with, even some paints and cardboard eggs if you’re really keen to treat them.

You don’t have to spend loads of money, of course; one of those 20p chicks that you get to decorate cakes with, that’s the kind of thing that would keep my two entertained for hours. They’d go off to build it a nest out of socks or try to make it ride the dog, much more fun than shoving chocolate in their mouths until I wrestle it from their Dairy Milk-smeared paws.

So here’s my plea. I don’t think Easter eggs are a problem but I think that children really only need one or two and that it’s always worth checking with the parents before you buy them. Please don’t give my kids chocolate and leave me to take it off them.

What about you, how to you control the chocolate onslaught at Easter time? Is our mum blogger overreacting? Have your say using the comments below.

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