TRAUMA Therapists Explain: Chocolate, Triggers, and Big Emotions at Easter | #TRIBE Talk - Ep. 26

In this episode of TRIBE Talk, we explore why Easter can be unexpectedly challenging for children with trauma histories. With increased excitement, disrupted routines, sensory overload, and high levels of sugar, what looks like a fun day can quickly become overwhelming. We unpack how chocolate, anticipation, and change can act as powerful triggers, leading to big emotions and behaviours that may seem sudden or disproportionate.

Through a trauma-informed and behavioural lens, we help adults understand what’s really happening underneath these reactions and how to respond in ways that support regulation rather than escalation. This episode offers practical, compassionate strategies to help children navigate Easter more successfully reducing stress, building predictability, and creating a sense of safety during what can otherwise be a difficult time.

Here is the other video we mention: Peppa Pig and the Easter Egg Hunt: https://youtu.be/MUnu7dAYwFI

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi everyone and welcome back to Tribe Talk. You're here with Rachel Evans and Nora Neal, and today is our Easter station and we're talking about chocolate chaos.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to Tribe Talk, the space for parents, carers and practitioners to explore trauma-informed care in practice. So if you're a parent or carer of a child who's experienced trauma, you may well have experienced chocolate chaos before. Uh, where our children gorge on chocolate, they are obsessed with it, they can't seem to move away from it. And chocolate around Easter time causes so many difficulties, it can be overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

So Laura, like you mentioned, there's a lot of things around chocolate, especially around Easter time, because children get a lot of Easter eggs. Yeah. And we see, and they're from school as well, and we just see a lot of difficulties cropping up. So you've listed a a couple. Yeah. Um, but this obsession over chocolate, how that then influences behaviour, um, you know, yeah, just obsession over chocolate in general. Yeah. Um, and find parents find themselves in situations where it's really difficult to manage, behaviours escalate, yeah. Um over chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah. And I have to say, chocolate is one of my favourite things. So me too. I yeah. Easter, it's not a time when I ever go on a diet because I love an Easter egg. Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely love an Easter egg. Um, but it can cause lots of difficulties for our children who've experienced trauma. So we're going to talk about a few of them today. And the the first one for me that springs to mind is impulsivity. So, for so many of our children, they they struggle with uh being able to control their impulses. And I think there's a couple of things where chocolate comes into this. So, one at Easter, there's so much chocolate around, it's really difficult not to just dive in and to save. Um, and you might have you might have different types of children to be fair. I've got two children, one of them who will eat all of their chocolate all at once, and the other one that'll save it for two months, yeah, mainly to wind her sister up, but you can get those difficulties as well. Um, but in terms of impulsivity, we know that our children struggle with impulsivity at the best of times, and when it comes to chocolate, that's made uh even worse. Uh, one because it's very moor-ish, they want to dive in, they want to eat more, um, and they just don't seem to have an off button with it.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, like opening loads of Easter eggs just to get to the chocolate bars. Yeah. Do you know when you've got like a Maltese Easter eggs? I'm gonna open all of this now, but I just want the Maltese, and then open the next one to get the chocolate buttons, and it's just all these Easter eggs get opened, and it's just this big mess of chocolate just to get to the the favourite thing with within that Easter egg, but it's just that lack of control over okay, well I'll have a little bit and off then and and not eat a lot of the chocolate at once.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

And I think um sometimes we can set our children up to fail by expecting them to be able to do that. Um, they can't do it for so many other things, but at Easter we're expecting them to be able to refrain from diving into all of those eggs. So we have to be really realistic, I think, in terms of their ability to not be that impulsive. Um they haven't got the skills, and then I think that uh what I mean, what is in chocolate, it makes us all want to eat more of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

So and I was thinking, like, you know, the more that we eat of those types of foods, it makes us feel really rubbish, yeah, and like just sluggish um eventually, you know, and then children are in then for two weeks eating and eating and eating chocolate, and yeah, it just has an impact, it has a knock-on effect, is what I'm trying to say, with mood and and things, yeah, absolutely. Um, which again it just adds another layer then to to parenting at that time.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, yeah. So parenting a child who might um whose mood might be much worse than usual because they've eaten so much chocolate. Yeah, yeah. So I think our first tip would be be really really realistic about impulsivity and that if you're expecting your child to have five Easter eggs and to save them and be able to regulate that themselves, it's unlikely they're going to be able to. So often we need to do that for them and um put rules and boundaries around when we can have a certain number of eggs.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, or have like an egg every so often, you know, throughout the two-week break or throughout throughout the Easter break. Yeah. Um, but it you know it it's like thinking outside the box as well, because parents and carers might be in situations if um a child's gone to contact and their parents might have, or grandparent have given them an egg. Um so it's just have it, like you said, those boundaries around um around that.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

That's a very good point. So, in terms of setting up for success success for that, because I think if you think about contact, they might go to contact and there might be um contact with mum, for example, and mum might bring three eggs, so one off Nan, um, one off granddad, and one off her might bring more, and then child is coming home with three eggs, that's a lot. Yeah, uh, those rules and boundaries might not have been in place in contact, so they might have eaten an egg and a half by the time they come out as well. Uh, so you might be have these situations, uh, it's good to set them up in advance. So, say, mum might bring you some eggs, uh, this is what we're gonna do with them when you come home, so that that expectation's already there.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Yeah, and that just brings good communication, doesn't it, across like everyone that's supporting that child, so everyone's on the same page and um can set the child up for success with relaying you know what's um what's appropriate in in in the home that they're currently residing in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Um, which kind of brings me on to my next point as well, which is food associations. So for many of our children uh who've experienced trauma, they will have had a lack of food in their past. Yeah. Um, and then these food associations and possibly that association, well, if there's food there, I need to eat it now, because otherwise it might not be there in the future, might be there for them. Um, which means we've got to be really mindful of that in our trauma-informed care, uh, in thinking about okay, how are we going to set this up? So they don't think they have to eat all of this at once or it's gonna disappear.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Um, so one thing would be to not take eggs away completely, make sure that they're there, they're not used as a consequence of okay, your behaviour hasn't been great today, you're gonna lose an egg. I'd never do that for a child who's experienced trauma. Um, make sure they're there, make sure that the amount that they can have at different times is regulated and that that's done by the adult. Um, but then also being mindful that other things might happen around food associations like that. So, for example, hoarding is one that comes up all the time. Um, keeping chocolates, keeping their eggs under their bed or in a cupboard. I've seen children put them behind radiators, not knowing that they're gonna melt and go everywhere. Yeah, um, those things, those things can come up and to not get too annoyed if they do, because it's usually linked with this negative food association.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I was thinking of other other trauma type of responses as well, Laura, such as around like the um like the smell and the taste maybe of chocolate, and it takes me back to um a family I was working with that um just had experiences of just a lot of takeaway and junk food that was in their diet, and then their beliefs then around like what a healthy diet was was really skewed, yeah. But particularly around these events such as Easter and Christmas, we seen a lot of a lot of those behaviours such as hoarding or not really understanding like um what they can consume. I know we're gonna come on to stealing. We s what was perceived as stealing, but it was just that like this is in my history and it's like creating this comfort for me. Um but it was uh yeah, it um it created like a lot of a lot of problems just because they that's what they were just used to, you know, having a lot of like chocolate and junk food in their in their history and um not being able to control then what they were consuming, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

And you mentioned stealing, which is on my list to talk about because I think this comes up so often around Easter, um, is guaranteed we will have at least one parent or carer who asks us, asks us what do I do? My child has stolen all the Easter eggs and eaten them or hidden them or hoarded them. Um, and in in all of those cases, whenever we get that question, I always try to bring it back to it's probably not stealing with the intent that the word stealing is used with. Um, when you steal something, you you take it sneakily, um, and it might appear like that, but actually there's usually other reasons behind it. So, like you described there with that uh young person who'd been in a situation where they were all these negative food associations, um, it might be that they feel that they they have to grab this food because it might not be available again, or they might have experiences in their past where people have taken that away from them. So they might have had an egg for Easter and that's been taken away. Um, so then they take what's available because somebody might take it if they don't, if they don't take it themselves. So they I think the word stealing is quite harsh. It's a strong word, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

And like you said, it might look like that, yeah. But the purpose that is serving to that child is very different. They're not stealing to upset anybody or um yeah, to you use the word then I've forgotten what you said, but you know, they they're not stealing to um to like hurt anybody's feelings. Like that's like the main thing. It's it's serving like a different purpose, you know, they're it's creating some sort of comfort for them, I suppose, in in lots of cases, whether that's linked to their to their trauma history in some way. Um, but we do see that behaviour a lot. Um one of you know that one of our first questions is okay, let's look into this a little bit more. Why might they be doing this? It's look to their trauma history, let let's just find like some solutions to this. Yeah. Um yeah, because it's usually like a bit of a simple fix that. Yeah. Is that we link to the ceiling?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

No. And it always comes up around Easter. It's interesting because this is the one that comes up around Easter, around Easter eggs, but doesn't necessarily come up at Christmas around toys. Yeah, yeah. Chocolate. But chocolate is designed to be it's designed to make us eat more. Uh so a child might have had all of their eggs and they've got none left. So then they go and find somebody else's and take them. Yeah, but we have to remember that it's usually fed by those negative associations of food that have come from their past.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah, that one definitely comes up.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah. And then gorging as well, and I think that's on a um a sim similar tangent, really, where they gorge all of their eggs because they're worried that they're gonna go or they just don't have the ability to stop like that lack of impulse control.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying about impulsivity and not being able to manage, you know, what while they're eaten at at one time, and um it's it's freely available. Yeah. You know, where eggs are usually they're on like the mantelpiece, they're on the sideboard, and they're freely available to children. And then when they're there in sight, like you said, they're the packaging is designed to be desirable too.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So I mean I struggle with that when like I love chocolate and an egg is up there on the side in the kitchen, like, oh just have a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Do you know what? My husband can sit there with a chocolate bar on the side and he will not touch it. And I'm looking at it thinking, if you don't eat that now, I'm gonna have it. But chocolate does that to me, where like like any snack, you know, if if I'm if I'm taking it from the cupboard, I'm gonna eat it. I'm not gonna put it to the side for five minutes. Um, but yeah, packaging and like like you said, the taste is all designed to entice us to to eat more, and when it's freely available, insight, you know, it's hard, especially for children who haven't got the skills to be able to manage um or make decisions like that. Yeah, they're gonna go for all the chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah. And everyone else is in the house. So I think if we expect that, so what do we do about this? Well, one, expect it to happen. No, as an adult, we're gonna need to take more control over that situation because our children are unlikely to be able to, even as teenagers if they've not been able to do this in the past. Um, so we want to set them up for success by preempting a lot of these things, putting rules and boundaries around the eggs in place, uh, making sure that they are in a safe, secure location rather than just out on the canter. If I'm gonna struggle with not eating that, our kids are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so preempt it really and make sure that we're putting these uh rules and boundaries around the eggs and taking control of it as adults.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we need to help our children make choices aro around that, and we're teaching skills along the way, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and if we do that every year and we it forms a consistent pattern, that's when they learn over time, and in years to come they'll find it a lot more easier.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah. Um, so I think that's that's chocolate and eggs. The other thing I wanted to touch on was Easter egg hunts. Right. Yeah. Um, so Easter egg hunts is another area that I think causes difficulty for children who've experienced trauma for many reasons. So the what we've already talked about can feed into an Easter egg hunt. The um the impulsivity, the difficulty with being able to stop eating chocolate, that can all feed in to have lots of chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

But I think in addition to that, there are other difficulties that can come up with Easter egg hunts. Um, and on the surface, we can think, oh, they're gonna love this, it's gonna be so much fun. We've designed this Easter egg hunt. They have a runarang, burn some energy. Yeah, boom some energy, and then it doesn't work out as as well as we'd hoped. Um, but why is that? Uh so the first um the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think about a child who's experienced trauma and finding Easter eggs is that often they have difficulties with visualizing or finding anything.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

So to put them on an Easter egg hunt where they've got to find something, immediately their anxiety goes up because they know they have difficulty finding things. If they're in a group with other children, my friends are gonna find those so much easier than I am. Or if they find them and I don't find them, will I get any eggs? Maybe I won't find any and I won't get any. And that can lead to, particularly for our little ones, big meltdowns.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

I'm not good enough.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Everyone else has found, and I'm I'm gonna be the one without anything again.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah, so you get that even before they even get into the Easter egg hunt, and they might not find anything, but then when they get into the Easter egg hunt, what if they lose? What if they don't find anything?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I think it's like just the just the rush as well of like, okay, you've got it's a time limit because like once all the eggs are gone, they're gone. Yeah. And there's a rush to who can get the most Easter eggs. So like you were saying earlier about setting up for success, we're kind of setting our kids up to for failure it because you can't control how many each one gets. Yeah. Um and then it's like are you gonna rush to try and get loads of Easter eggs? And you know, especially if there's um other children at present as well, and when when we have been talking about previously about like the skills that are impacted, like social skills, and yeah, you know, it's it makes an Easter egg hunt a lot more complicated, and um because there's lots of different skills that are needed for that to run successfully, and especially for our children when they're s when they struggle with these things, yeah. Um it just makes things a lot worse.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Um, because you're talking a lot, you said about a lot of skills. So, first off, we're talking about our motor skills, ability to run, jump, be as fast as our peers. Um, sensory skills, can we be in that busy environment uh with loud noises, with other children shouting? Uh are we gonna be impacted sensory? Um, our sensory uh needs gonna be impacted, and then you've got problem solving skills. I've looked in this one place, I now need to go look in another place, but where? And then I don't go back to that original place. Like you, I mean you've got a little one, so have you played hide and seek with him at all? Yeah, and he's really bad. Yeah, so does he look does he look in the same place all of the time? And you like you'll look there and then he'll expect you to be there again because he probably hasn't developed object permanence completely yet. But for our children who experience trauma, they they do that at an older age because they've not had those learning experiences, and then they don't find things as quickly as children who have had that development.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

No, and we don't see that then because we just see this eight-year-old child that you know can do, and we're doing this lovely activity as a family, and we're finding chocolate. Like how that's not gonna go well. Yeah, I can't think we're nuts saying that. But it is, I what I'm picturing in my head, Laura, is just like a family in a garden around Easter time, find the chocolate, and it is that to me is just chaos because it's like running around barging and we're arguing over chocolate, but I found this one first, and yeah, it just brings up so many difficulties.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah, it does. Um so last year, actually, I did a little YouTube video on this using Peppa Pig and the Easter egg hunts because George Pig is a great example of what we can see from our children who've experienced trauma. Um, so if you want a bit of a visual guide rather than me and you talking on a podcast, uh we'll put the link in the in the description. But there's so many things that George Pig does, and I think, oh okay, if this was a child who'd experienced trauma, this would be so difficult. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll put that link in the description uh for this podcast anyway. Um but I I think the final put part then when they have gathered, they might have gathered some eggs. Yeah. But their friend has got some eggs too. I know. Or their sibling has, and their siblings got ones that they want. And they're not gonna share. No. Um, and then that that results in more tantrums and difficulties.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah. So I think there's multiple times within Naster egg hunts that it can be difficult, and I think to set those up for success, try and do them on your own as a family, so you've got control over the situation, make it really easy, set it up so the kids get exactly the same egg so there's no disagreements. Yeah. Um, might be that in one place, if you've got two children, you have two eggs in one place that they find together, so it's more of a drink activity rather than a more community-based Easter egg hunt. You can set them up for success. But if you if you're you know, if you get invited to, oh, we're gonna have an Easter party and we're gonna do a hunt for the kids, be prepared that it might be more difficult than is else.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah, it might be a bit too overwhelming for them, and there's so many different areas that you'd have to prepare and set them up. But you can absolutely go ahead and and do something similar but on a smaller scale um with less people. Yeah. What I mean by smaller scale.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah. So our overall advice for Easter would be be prepared. Be prepared. Yeah. As adults, we need to take control. We need to take control of the schedule of when we eat chocolate. Um, that eggs aren't put into our children's rooms and they're expected to uh be able to regulate regulate themselves on when they when they eat that. If you are going on Easter egg hints, set them up for success, really prepare them and don't have like a massive group activity because that might be a recipe for disaster.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Yeah, yeah. But with all that advice, you can have a really calm Easter. Oh, yeah. The best Easter, yeah. Yeah, if we're if we're just preempting that, these things can happen with understanding your child's trauma history. Maybe they've been with you for a couple of years, and you've got like previous Easters that you can go off of and think, okay, well, that didn't go quite as well last year, and I'm gonna tweak it in in you know in this way now, and um it's gonna be better this year because I've planned for it. But the more plan and prep that we can put into it, it can be really successful. Yeah, absolutely. That wraps up our um episode with our Easter special on chocolate chaos. Um, so yeah, I hope you um took a lot of um tips and tricks from um from that episode. But if you want more information about trauma informed care in practice, then subscribe to Tribe Talk.