Am I the Only One That Can't Stand the Ice Cream Man?

Love love love the ice cream man!

Always have...always will.

But they don't sell drugs out of the ice cream vans anymore! LOL

Hi 3 girls-

I do not know if you are the only mom that feels this way...

And it has been 'donkey years' since I have seen/heard an ice cream truck in MY neighborhood...

BUT...as long as the ice cream is 'wrapped' (nutty buddy---do they still make them??)...I would 'spring' for a treat for my kiddos...

Brings back ALL kinds of safe memories for me...

If the driver was dressed as a clown...perhaps NOT! lol

best luck!
michele/cat

We love when the ice cream man comes! I used to tell them we can do this once a week because it is expensive. I always went to the truck with the kids. To each is own!

We let our kids get ice cream from him about half of the time that he comes. We see it is a joy of childhood not to be missed. I don't think that the ice cream man would tamper with the product. If you are leary about that there are about a million more dubious situations that you put yourself if-the biggest being eating in a restaurant.

We love the ice cream man!!!!

We have special money placed in the living room, for "just in case.."

I have sooo many great memories from childhood, all of us screaming for the ice cream man and all sitting on the curb enjoying it.

Heck my mom used to say we could only have a treat if we brought one for her too!

I do not think a person would be an ice cream man if he was poisoning kids or hurting them. He wouldn't make any money..

I've never let my kids buy from the icecream truck that came through our neighborhood. The major reason was that I had snacks in house and would rather save that money for other types of treats/rewards/outings.

Yes. I do think you are being overprotective. If you have any doubts, you should go with them.

P.S. the icecream person is our neighborhood is a lady.

Do you allow your kids to go trick or treating?
Or buy cookies from your neighborhood Girl Scouts?
Or sit on Santa's lap?
Of course it's your choice what you allow or not allow for your kids but the ICE CREAM MAN?!
Santa is WAY creepier IMO but I still let my kids participate, with supervision of course...
Contrary to popular belief the world is NOT full of monsters. Most of us are good people.
But good people makes for boring news, and dull internet conversation, I suppose :(

Of course we buy ice cream once in a while from the ice cream man/boy/girl whoever is driving the van or pedaling the little cart around the lake we live by. The people selling here are usually college kids home for the summer.

Jeez, let's just take the fun out of everything...

we love the ice cream man. It brings back great memories from my childhood and they come once a week around here , and I don't mind letting the kids get a treat a couple of times a month , especially in the summer. It's a fun little treat. My kids save up their money and buy it themselves.

Do I think you are being over protective? yep. The ice cream is pre packaged bars it's not like it's handdipped. It's right in front of your house , or if you go out there with them , right there with you.

I don't but it has nothing to do with being overprotective, I am not paying five dollars for a fifty cent ice cream.

do you screen everyone at restaurants and the supermarket too?
i make my own healthy ice cream treats when i want everyone to have healthy treats.
but when the ice cream truck comes around (which it doesn't, not out here, but in our old neighborhood he did) you bet my kids got to have some!
there has to be a good reason for me to deprive my kids of classic childhood delights. i can't figure out just what your objection is. too expensive? surely true. but most everyone can scrape up a buck a couple of times a summer. 'just a regular van with stickers'? is there an Official Ice Cream Vehicle? somebody you don't know or trust? you're not putting your kid in his back seat. you hand over some sticky money and get a pre-wrapped overpriced melty summer gooey kid-pleasing treat.
but whatever root beer floats your boat!
:) khairete
S.

I swear this is a true story: in our former neighborhood, around May, we would start to hear the ice cream truck playing its tune. My kids were a little older so that wasn't an issue really. But one evening I just stopped in my tracks, not sure of what I was hearing. I called my ds out to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. But I was right. I stood there an listened, as the tinkling loudspeaker on the truck clearly played the entire verse and chorus (instrumentals only) of "Oh Holy Night" (Oh Holy Night, the stars were brightly shining, it is the night of our dear Saviour's birth"). To this day I wonder, where would one even begin to get an ice cream truck version of a sacred carol?

On a better note, I was a nanny in college for a family with 3 kids, the youngest of whom was 3 years old and a type 1 diabetic (very severe). I had to get trained to care for him, since obviously they couldn't just get any babysitter. I learned to give him insulin and deal with his diabetic crashes. My brother and his pal had an ice cream truck route during those summers, and of course the little boy couldn't have the regular ice cream. So out of their own money, they bought sugar free, diabetic-friendly treats and stocked the truck with them. I didn't want the little boy to be confused, so I did tell him that the ice cream truck men had safe treats for him, and they would serve him his own special treats. It is a nice memory.

But I do understand your point. Some of the ice cream trucks look pretty sketchy to me now. However, if the neighborhood truck was a regular, and seemed to be well managed and safe, I would let them get an occasional treat, maybe on the weekends or something. It's part of childhood.

Do you allow your kids to go trick-or-treating?

We get it once in a while when we're at the park and it's super hot. And if it's too expensive (there are a few different trucks that come by) I'll tell my son which ones we can get so we don't pay a ridiculous amount. I think you're being a bit overprotective - every ice cream truck I've bought from has the pre-packaged/completely wrapped stuff.

We dont have an icecream man in our town and I miss it, the convenience outweighs the price you pay for the fun of getting it off of the truck.
My kids always loved it. We would hear the tune and they would look at me, there was always that pause and glance, they knew it well... because sometimes I didnt have the cash to put out, but boy when I did we'd all be running to that truck.
Fun memories.

We're so far out in the country we don't get any ice cream trucks cruising the neighborhood.
We don't get delivery pizza, either - we're just too far out.
I'm sure the horses wouldn't mind the music but they just don't buy ice cream.
One of my son's teachers drives an ice cream truck in her spare time.

No, you are not the only one. In fact, our village does not allow them because they can not check who is driving the van. I'm more than ok with this.

We have an ice cream shop that is a bikes ride away and that works great for us!

They still have those???? Go figure, coutry girl here and can't say as i have ever had the pleasure.

It weirds me out not to know how much stuff costs though so i doubt i would walk up and order icecream if it didn't have a sign saying how much. but the idea of it sounds fun and nostalgic.

No, I agree with you.

All the ice cream man does is wake up my son in the middle of his nap.

I have come THIS close to asking the ice cream man not to circle our block anymore. No one from our block buys ice cream from her anyway.

i dont have a problem with the guy himsel.. although iv definatley come across a few creeps.. what i will say though is that freaking song drives me nuttssss .. i live on a couldesac and the streets afterand before mine are the same .. and the guy knows theres kids on them all so instead of just circleing slowly and leaving he will sit on each one with that damn song blasting wait a while and if noone comes out then he goes to the next.. its really annoying

What I hate is the begging that can happen when the kids hear it. I decided to teach my 2 year old that it was a music truck. My teenagers thought it was the dumbest idea I've ever had and promptly told her what it was.

I hate him and would shoot out his tires, but I don't like breaking the law. I am not suspicious of him though. I'm just not going to waste money on him - except once in a blue moon. I'll walk my kids over to the ice cream store 2 blocks away, or we make yummy desserts at home.

Ice cream trucks don't come down are road, but there is a truck that parks by a grocery store near us. They only sell soft serve cones, but they are only 75 cents.

I have great memories from my childhood in the 1970's of running with our coins for the ice cream man. It was clean and neat and the same older fella (or 2 or 3 who exchanged days on the route), with a nice truck and the whole she-bang.

The ones we see in OUR area are some old ratty clappity broke down looking vans, with crooked and peeling stickers and unkempt, snaggly toothed, smelly and creeper looking people who can barely be understood (either foreign language or so much slang they are all but yelling at you).

No way am I purchasing anything from them. At this point, they rarely come thru our neighborhood. Each year, if they are these similar conditioned people, they must determine their is little business around our area and do not return.

Such a bummer too as I would LOVE to do that with my daycare kids if it was a decent set up and they came once a week in the later afternoon, right before parents were set to arrive!

I will assume every area is different.

My grandson is not allowed either....the guys are usually dirty looking..and you're right...the vehicles are trashy looking too. We even saw him out after dark one night.

It is not that I don't TRUST the ice cream man, but I just get so annoyed by the song. Ours has been playing the same ONE song for the past 6 summers. The poor man must be going insane by now after listening to "Turkey in the Straw" hundreds of times a day for years on end.

When I hear the song coming down the street I swoop all my kids up and rush into the house before they know what's happening. Once we get inside I either turn on music or sing very loudly until he passes. I just don't want to get into the habit of the kids begging for ice cream every time they hear the song. That'll happen soon enough :)

I'm not crazy about him either. I have fond memories of the ice cream man when I was a kid, but times are different now. Where I live, we have about 5 ice cream parlors within a mile radius....with way better ice cream than the ice cream man could ever sell!

We don't usually get an ice cream truck around here, I have seen it once or twice since we moved to Florida and it is a company that services from Tampa to Orlando.

My daughter likes ice pops not ice cream and they are a lot cheaper to buy a box or make our own.

I just don't like when we hear that music AFTER the kids have finished an ice cream treat or dessert at home and then we have to crush them by telling them they can't run down the street to the ice cream truck because they just HAD a treat. It's fun when the timing is good, but frustrating when it isn't.