It’s not really ethical to market that aggressively to kids, because kids just want. All the time they want. Most people here were children themselves once, or at least know people who have been children. If kids had the credit card, they’d spend everything on Pokémon cards and candy.

Here’s a better question before you call me a Karen: given that most people have freezers, who exactly benefits from daily ice cream truck visits? Not the parents, for reasons above. The kids find it frustrating too. The fact that they had ice cream yesterday usually doesn’t ease their disappointment.

If provided with consistency, yes that's exactly what happens. I've raised three kids who have not had repeated meltdowns over hearing an ice cream truck.

Mazel tov. Unfortunately for parents who aren't you, the act of providing the "consistency" you're advocating for, often DOES require dealing with repeated meltdowns, or even just maddeningly repetitive questions of "why not". Children are born wild animals (not yours, of course), and raising them is the act of civilizing them.

If there's one thing that annoys me about other parents, its seeing or hearing about someone dealing with a difficulty that your kids didn't have, and then patting yourself on the back for being a better parent. Every time you explain something to your kids, they just got it and stopped bothering you about it? Trust me when I say, you are in the minority.

> meltdowns over hearing an ice cream truck

I know for a fact, it just wasn't an issue when I was a kid, or even in our neighborhood until this year, when the trucks started parking on our street after school. For many children, that is a time of the day when they are exhausted and unlikely to be reasoned with. Maybe it's a sign their parents are "inconsistent" or whatever, but I maintain that there is a difference between a truck stopping by once every hour or 4-5 times per hour, and also a difference between an ice cream truck at the park vs stopping on residential streets one by one every day. There's no other business that works this way, it's not like they have some fundamental right, and that's not even talking about the noise pollution aspect.

It's not your job as a parent to 1) make sure your children are happy all the time 2) defend your decisions against all attacks.

I found that when children say "why not" repeatedly, they are actually saying "I am unhappy and want to find an argument to reconsider your stance". If you signal them that this is actually something to argue about, e.g. by repeatedly answering these questions, they will just play the game you are offering them.

I found that it's actually a good approach to only directly answer "why not" the first time, and to just answer it the second time by "I understand that you are unhappy about my decision. I have already explained it and will not explain it again. If you need help dealing with your unhappiness I will be there for you."

A lot of the maddening part of these questions is most often the parent not being able to deal with the unhappiness of the child. Once you accept that unhappiness is a natural part of life 1) this will be easier for you 2) you will model much better for your child how to deal with unhappiness.

I do actually and in particular a little one with autism, making part of the process for educating on certain things more difficult than average, but despite being far from parent of the year, I manage and there are things that work.

>You think you’re just going to explain to a four year old the rules about ice cream and they’ll just be like “you’re right daddy. I forgot we had ice cream from the truck yesterday. I’ll grab some carrot sticks instead”?

Well, yeah. That's what parenting is partly about. Establish limits or conduct through repeated insistence on certain rules and lessons to be learned learned, instead of trying to make complaints against others causing a minor inconvenience with their own source of making a living or food choices you don't seem to like.

Parenting isn't easy and each case is different, but if something as minor as a few minutes of ice cream truck marketing is too much to handle with your kids, blaming others isn't your solution to that problem.

And please, the whole ethics thing you describe is just absurd in this context. A jingling ice cream truck, which kids love and which hardly sells something terrible or deceptive, is far from the kind of manipulative marketing you're contriving here. It's just a basic and basically harmless reality: Kids love ice cream, and there's nothing wrong with someone selling a bit of it to them. You're creating an ethical knot that doesn't have any good reason for existing in a normal world.

Example: Every time I take mine home from school, we pass by a Dairy Queen that's on the route home. Oops, and guess what gets asked for each day that this happens? Some days I say sure, and we go get a cone or blizzard. Other days, it's a firm no, and that's that. Repeat insistence made this work out okay. And I don't blame the DQ for anything, even though this particular branch happens to also use music to market its very visible presence.

>Here’s a better question before you call me a Karen: given that most people have freezers, who exactly benefits from daily ice cream truck visits? Not the parents, for reasons above. The kids find it frustrating too. The fact that they had ice cream yesterday usually doesn’t ease their disappointment.

Totally subjective opinions of your own, and in no way justifying getting so annoyed that you want to ban these things, as you seem to. Again, how about not converting your personal dislikes of minor things into trying to shut those things down.