'Weird parenting choice but okay': Entitled mom encourages her 3 kids to ransack a stranger's Easter egg hunt, stealing over half of their hidden eggs before getting called a bad mom by the 32-year-old woman to whom they belonged

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Apr 23, 2025 7:00 PM EDT

Parents, would you let your kids pick up candy off the ground from strangers? 

When you put it that way, most parents would adamantly deny those allegations on any day apart from Easter. Somehow, Easter egg hunts became an American tradition, but regardless of this silly tradition's origins, many people participate in the festivities every year. However, it's an unspoken rule that you don't steal other people's eggs, because, of course, these games take time and money to set up. So when this entitled mom in our next story let her kids ransack a stranger's Easter egg hunt setup, they rightfully retaliated, taking a jab at her parenting skills.

Because when a childless group of 30-year-olds host a 4/20 Easter egg hunt, perhaps a parent should think twice about letting their child steal someone else's property. You never know what could be inside that egg…

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  • With 3 kids, you're always outnumbered by your children. And when you're down to one parent, a trio of spawn can be a handful. However, that doesn't grant you the entitlement to let the public parent your kids, and you're still beholden to some light parenting every now and then. The absentee mom in this next story was happy to throw her children into the mix of the public, regardless of whose Easter eggs they stole—as long as they left her alone long enough to scroll on her phone, she was fine with whatever… Even theft.

  • Cheezburger Image 10496660736
    via Caroline Voeleker

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • "AITA for confronting a mom whose kids were stealing all the eggs I'd hidden for my friends?"

    Ugh. This is so stupid but I'm still mad about it. Yesterday my girlfriend (32F) and I (35F) threw a little combination Easter-4/20 get-together for some friends in a large public
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  • park that included, as one element, an Easter egg hunt. This is a big local park where people often do small private egg hunts for their families and friends, so
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  • the idea isn't totally out there. We bought around 100 plastic eggs, stuffed each one with 2-3 pieces of candy, and hid them within a smallish area of the park about
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  • 20 minutes before everyone else was due to arrive. We figured because the weather was nice, we'd probably lose a few eggs due to kids walking by and
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  • stumbling on easy-to-find ones, but we bought enough that we could absorb some marginal losses. Some were pretty visible, others psychotically well-hidden, most were pretty much in the
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  • middle - you'd have to really be looking to spot them walking by. While we were waiting for all of our friends to arrive, we noticed three kids running around the
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  • area where we'd hidden them, and they all had their arms FULL of eggs. Like 15-20 apiece easily. Their mom was sort of trailing behind, not paying attention, and on the phone. It got to a point
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  • where we finally got her attention and she literally went, "Is it okay if they take these?" My GF and I were both dumbfounded. Because, again, we figured we'd lose a few eggs to kids who
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  • grabbed one or two. But this was EGREGIOUS. They had easily 50 between them. There were 15 people coming. Yes, they were all adults, but adults also like to have silly fun too!
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  • So we basically told her, uh, no? Please put them back? Her response was some version of "They're just kids! It's a kids' holiday!" I asked her if she usually lets her kids take candy
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  • from strangers off the ground in public parks, and said something along the lines of, "Weird parenting choice, but okay," and she got huffy and told the kids
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  • they were leaving and to put them back. The kids threw some of the eggs on the ground but still left with probably 40 eggs in total. Again, that's... 80-120 pieces of candy that we bought.
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  • For our friends. And ourselves. Not for random children who didn't even bother to ask before taking it. (If they'd asked, we probably would've said sure, within reason! 2-3 apiece! NOT LITERALLY HALF OF THEM.)
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  • Anyway, now I feel like an AH for calling her a bad parent in front of her kids and for ruining their fun, but I also have a real tendency to feel insanely guilty
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  • any time I stand up for myself (blame my own mom's stellar parenting for that!), so I just wanted a temperature check. This was objectively insane behavior, right? Or am I the a hole?
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  • Famous_Specialist_... I wasn't sympathetic to you because it's in a public park however the fact mom knew what was going on when she said "Is it okay if they take these?" means NTA
    via Famous_Specialist_
  • Spare_Ad5009 ESH. Dumb move. Public park. But the mother should have stopped them right away. They actually could have had something bad in them. She should have insisted they put them all back. She's teaching them to be thieves.
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  • FabulousTrick8859 If that had been my kids, there would have been a very clear "put them back, they're not ours" after the first one.You can still have fun spotting them but not taking.
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  • Different if it's an organised hunt but this wasn't. NTA. I like the other redditors suggestions of tokens too!
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  • daeganthedragon I wouldn't put it past some people to do a public Easter egg hunt on 4/20 with edible candies inside, so she was really taking a risk letting her kids take your property. NTA
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  • peachandpeony I don't understand people saying "well you should have expected people to take some eggs if you were gonna hide them in public" like OP *did* expect people to take some of them because that
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  • just happens, but who sees DOZENS of hidden eggs that would obviously belong to an easter egg hunt THEY'RE NOT A PART OF and just take DOZENS of them without looking around
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  • for an organizer to see 1. if it's fine to take them and 2. see if they're safe to take? If it's an adult easter egg hunt, there might be some jokey items that aren't appropriate for children or candy that children shouldn't have, like candies/chocolates that might contain coffee or liqueur.
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  • Also, why would you ask if they're fine to take if you're not ready to put them back? This whole thing was just her hoping you'd be too flustered to say no to her taking candy that has been left unattended for like 20 minutes.
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  • Like imagine you're doing a treasure hunt across your city and some random person finds clue envelope #4 on their way home from work and decides to do the treasure hunt, finds the
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  • gift at the end, and takes it home. Sure, you left an item unattended, but stealing is still an a hole move?? NTA.
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Tags

easter easter egg hunt hijack stolen entitled parents ransack drama mother easter eggs motherhood moms parenting entitled parent mom Parenting Fail karen parents thief entitled people
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