For the last two years we have been taking the kids to clubs and hotels to celebrate Easter and to join the egg hunt.  The cost ranges from P500 to P1,000 inclusive of brunch buffet for the kids. Naturally we also have to pay for our buffet, an extra expense.

We don’t complain since Easter happens only once a year. Then just last week the kids started art class and, out of the blue, wanted to paint eggs for Easter. So, after sitting them down and explaining the benefits of holding our own hunt, they agreed to do it in our own backyard.

The plan was, after painting the eggs and filling them with treats, we would hide them the night before, so that the kids could search for them upon waking up.

Then we would enjoy a nice breakfast together at a fraction of what we spent in years past, without missing out on the fun experience.

The secret to getting the kids to agree is to involve them in the process. Fortunately we had a lot of plastic eggs from previous hunts and they wanted to paint the eggs themselves. We had 20 small plastic eggs and four large ones. We bought chocolates and candies to put into the eggs and their favorite breakfast items of air-dried bacon, salami and Parmesan cheese.

But we wondered if we would be able to recreate the whole fun experience for them.

It didn’t help that painting is not our thing, and it took us days to complete all the eggs. The thing is, at the very least. it was keeping them away from their iPads and Xbox, a task almost impossible to achieve in this day and age.

By the time we got up on Easter Sunday morning, all the eggs had been hidden and breakfast was all set. Nevertheless, we still had a feeling that the kids would not enjoy scouring our small garden for eggs as they did in the past.

But we needlessly worried too much. As they ran around for some 20 minutes looking under and over every rock, hedge and flower pot, we could see that we had made the right decision.

We have come to realize that kids these days look at things differently from how our generation did. They seem to know and understand more than we did at that age.  So, explaining to them a situation and why certain measures or changes have to be done is a better way of getting them to agree to something; that’s better than trying to trick them.

Of course, there is only so much explaining they will accept. We guess we were pushing it too far when we tried to convince them that making their own Christmas presents was also a good thing.