Learner Mum: On Instagram, these occasions look like pastel perfection. In reality...

Jen Stevens discovers a lot has changed in the 35 years since she was a child eagerly awaiting a chocolate treat on Easter morning

Picture: iStock 

This Easter is our first encounter with The Bunny. With an almost four-year-old and a two-year-old, the only magic that has happened in our house so far has been on Christmas Eve. I go all-in for that, we read a special book, there are family PJs, a group photo, carrots, mince pies and glasses of milk left on the hearth. The whole shebang. But so far, a lot of that has just been for me - their understanding of the situation has been tenuous at best.

That very strict Elf hasn't come to us yet, though I fear it's only a matter of time, and no tooth fairies have swung by leaving cash under pillows. It's been a magic-free zone for 364 days of the year.

But daughter number one came home from preschool last week with 20 questions about The Bunny, which left me with 20 more. I've been messaging WhatsApp groups, accosting her classmates' mothers in the car park, and shouting questions at her teachers. It turns out that a lot has changed in the 35 years since I was a child eagerly awaiting a chocolate treat on Easter morning. It seems like there must be hunts and prizes and multiples of egg sizes,  all worked out in conjunction with an enormous, anthropomorphised bunny that I assume will also cause some nightmares the week of the big day.

It's funny before you have children the way you smile at parents choosing gifts and chocolate eggs for big occasions. You think, how cute, as you tumble 12 of 'the three for a fiver' eggs into your trolley for the nieces and nephews you may see over the long weekend (while not so secretly hoping that you miss a couple of them so you can lie on the couch binging rom coms and eating cheap chocolate). 

Jennifer Stevens

You know nothing of the panic of getting the right thing, the fear of missing out on the one egg that your beloved really wanted that was in the shops in February but is nowhere to be found now. The knots parents tie themselves in to keep everyone happy and not in any way jeopardise THE MAGIC.

From the outside and on Instagram, these occasions look like pastel perfection. Children are happy to wear sweet outfits (and manage to keep them clean) while frolicking around the garden, joyfully finding eggs under daffodils and popping them in woven baskets to save for later.

In reality, most children will have had the day's first tantrum when you showed them the cute outfit you bought for the special occasion. They're tearing lumps out of each other in the quest to find more chocolate, and when they do get one, they're ripping it open and shoving it straight in their mouths instead of into their basket.

My mum used to hand make us one egg each with our name on it and that was basically it. It was a simpler time, though I'm sure we still bashed each other.

Anyway, never one to do things by halves, I've already accumulated some bunny paraphernalia, gathered the baskets and have enough small German supermarket eggs for about 100 children to hunt. I've told The Bunny to hide them early in the morning. The last thing I want to do is make our local foxes and badgers sick by putting them out the night before. And I definitely don't want to get into another argument with our local crows, they won the last one, but that's a tale for another day.