I am happy to see the days of summer dwindle for one reason, and one alone. The winter hiatus of the ice cream man. You would too if you lived in my house. We live in an urban area so the ice cream man is more than a daily visit, it’s 3 different trucks that drive down our street starting when school releases all the way to 7:30 at night. Two of them play music, one is something like “Pop goes the weasel” and the other is “When the saints go marching in”, the third just dings a bell. And they are the bane of my existence.
As you might know, I have a 2.5 year old daughter who loves ice cream and a well meaning husband who bought her ice cream from one of the trucks late last summer as a “special treat”. Well this summer rolled around and she knew, her ears primed for the music and bells and was excited the first warm day they came back to harass my neighborhood. No matter how hard we tried to tell her it was a special, occasional goody, she was in a flurry of panic when she heard the ice cream sounds coming from streets away. She would look for money, she would frantically tell the little kids in the neighborhood kids “ice cream is coming!!”, which they eventually caught on to, tricking her to think it was coming loving to get her whipped up about it.
But it was hard to get her off of the excitement and deliver the disappointment, “no, honey, we aren’t getting ice cream tonight”. Tears start, “No, why!!!!! Oh no! Why? Please!” and then to have it happen one or two times more, and she would get stressed to hear them and know we aren’t buying. She would actually say, “Oh no, not again! not again…” As if to even be saying herself, stop torturing me with your ice cream calls. But she’s hooked and we are too late to unhook her. Who knew it would turn into this, that the lure for terrible ice cream sold from trucks would be so strong. I know this is silly, a very no problem sort of an issue, but I want to know- do the ice cream men know how hard it is say no 3 times a night?!
Some healthier ice cream alternatives for your little ones:
Cool Fruits All Natural Freezer Pops
Fudgsicle a satisfying 60 calorie treat
Natural Choice Frozen Fruit Bars
Ciao Bella Sorbetto
365 Every Day ValueFrozen Fruit Bar
So funny and so sad at the same time. I can just picture her melancholy little face…I myself eat a sugar free popsicle almost every night in the summer
But I haven’t had to contend with Owen wanting ice cream yet!
Oh no, that sounds horrible! Funny how doing something so fun and spontaneous like buying your kid ice cream can turn on you like that. We only have 1 truck here and TJ thinks it is “the music truck.”
I can’t stand the ice cream truck music now, but as a kid I did like to hear it coming. Sounds like it was a good experience for your daughter to learn about limits and disappointment. It might help to talk to her before the sound and explain that if she hears it, it doesn’t mean that she is getting ice cream. If she’s already heard the sound, its too late for reason.
A nanny show I saw on TV talked about that - “preparing” kids for bad news, so that they know the bad news is coming beforehand. This helps them emotionally prepare for the disappointment and can help avoid temper tantrums.
How’s it go? All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel….