quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

no, no no, nabisco. parents need to set limits for their kids when it comes to sweets, this is 100% a parenting issue. part of being an effective -- forget about awesome -- parent is not giving in to whining and pleading and throwing fits. kids are bombarded with so many sugar/junk food temptations -- not just from rogue ice cream vendors but TV commercials -- that parents just giving into them with convenience sake...well, you've read the statistics about obesity. teaching your kids healthy eating is more important than ever. i know that sounds corny, but it's true.

when you think about what was going on in NYC parks/playgrounds a couple decades ago, ridding the world of ice cream vendors is laughable.

she is basically asking for enforcement of existing rules so she less often has to deal with an I-want-treats tantrum . . . they object cause when kids see an ice cream truck they want ice cream, and if that happens every five minutes it is going to get kinda tiring.

See but the problem is they're raising the kind of kids who throw an I-want-treats tantrum every damned time they hear the bells on the truck, even though they've already been explicitly told "No." These kinds of children are commonly referred to as "poorly-behaved," and it's almost always the fault of parents who can't set boundaries. My sister and I didn't have super-parents by any stretch of the imagination, but we didn't behave like that, and neither did most kids I knew.

don't these people have better things to worry about, you know, like what pre-school their little max and sasha are going to get into

Re telling kids "no" -- Hahah, you don't really know me if you think I'm going to disagree with that. But kids have no concept of time passing or of the fitness of things, so "you can have ice cream once a week" is like the farthest thing from a reasonable explanation. Expect pretty much moment-to-moment whining, crying, and wanting, when the ice cream is being waved in front of their face, metaphorically, by the music playing all the time.

You guys, on a certain level it's not fair to keep the desired thing right in the forefront of a kid's mind all the time. You can tell them no, but then you have to redirect them somehow and get them engaged in something else. And with those jingles playing ALL THE TIME, kids are going to have really varying levels of ability to get re-engaged elsewhere. Any of you parents could tell the rest of us that even a good kid has bad days!

i went 2 a fine pre school thank u very much

xpost - haha yeah see Sarah I think you're off there. kids want ice cream when you roll up offering ice cream. if nobody mentions ice cream, they might not even think about it. they might go on happily playing with their friends. they might behave badly later, or whatever, but it's one less issue.

coleman we're not talking about giving in to whining or fits, we're talking about how some parents would rather keep certain areas more temptation-free so as not to have to deal with the issue so often in the first place -- that's really less about your relationship with your child and more about your relationship with your environment!

yes, Laurel puts it really nicely -- it's completely understandable to me that a parent might resent having the issue constantly dangling right in front of the kid's nose. again, not solely a matter of teaching them to deal with it, more a matter of the environment.

god bless these renegade ice cream 'pushers' -- doing the lord's work against the bloomberg/goop.com axis -- only when the life expectancy & cardio fitness of ruling class spawn is dragged into the death zone will the people be free -- hail hail

kids do learn. if you say no consistently they will get it. these parents are fucking losers.

Hahahahaha. Tracer, you'll get yours soon enough....

You can tell them no, but then you have to redirect them somehow and get them engaged in something else. And with those jingles playing ALL THE TIME, kids are going to have really varying levels of ability to get re-engaged elsewhere.

-- yeah, that's the crux of it, it's a real challenge ...I guess the issue is whether it's a reasonable/healthy impulse to restrict that part of their environment. The omnipresent ice cream truck, in and of itself, isn't inherently an unreasonable/unhealthy thing to want to restrict. The notion of wanting to restrict anything and everything that is gonna lead to these sorts of conflicts is what I find delusional and unhealthy.

i have kids, the parents in this article are retarded

nabisco I just think the energy expended towards maintaining a temptation-free environment would be spent better and far more effedtively spent seeking to influence one's own child's behavior. These people are lazy or entitled, it's not up to them to decide how or when the rest of the community's kids consume ice cream.

these kids get taken to the playground every day? Fuck them!

sorry, this is parenting 101 type stuff

learn how to redirect yr children ffs

ehhh look i'm sympathetic in my paternalist liberal way that city regulation of ice cream trucks ought to be enforced for any number of health and quality of life reasons... but christ yeah the notion that anything a little bit irritating to you and your Special Little One on your day out in the park means that the arm of the state has to come in and do something, uhh, stfu

probably a contradiction there i guess

The sound of ice cream trucks constantly cruising makes me want to stab a person with a million toothpicks, and it doesn't even make me want ice cream. And I LOVE ice cream! So I guess I'm hypothetically sympathetic to that situation, but not to the parents as they're quoted here. They sound like a bunch of dicks.

I was a pretty stubborn, argumentative kid, and came to accept my mom's rules about cereal-buying. I think at some point I discovered that Rice Krispies (or Frosted Flakes or Corn Pops, one of the three) actually had sugar as the 3rd ingredient (which meant it was ok). My mom was shocked, but rules were rules, so I got to have Rice Krispies a lot.

I pretty much agree with m coleman on this--everything else in life is so great & perfect that you can worry about the ice cream truck in the park? you know, the music is there to get the kids attention! that's the way it's always been; it is a part of american culture. and if your best argument is really "it's annoying when my kid wants ice cream" maybe you should have waited to be a parent? like obviously i am not a parent & don't intend on being one for a while but like, if you can't deal with your kid asking for shit, how are you going to live with your children? asking for shit is part of being a kid. wanting gumballs from the machine at the supermarket, wanting cheap squirt gun at the pharmacy, wanting everything and being unable or unwilling as a child to understand things about money, health etc.

Life cereal was my major legislative score. don't know how i did it.

it's not up to them to decide how or when the rest of the community's kids consume ice cream

I don't get this: they're part of the "community," right? And the community/city already decides who can sell ice cream and how, right? So they already decide this.

But if they're in a minority and the rest of the people that use that park are cool with the ice cream trucks ...

... then nothing will happen and hooray for democracy?

btw guys don't hate me but I recently considered complaining about the food cart that sets up on a narrow bit of sidewalk and blocks the whole thing so I can't walk my dog through -- I am not against food, I just find it annoying

uh is policing ice cream vendors a high-priority task of civic money & resources?

plenty of nice clean streets in PYONGYANG

well sure, democracy rules. but as quality of life violations go, i think food vending in new york is very loosely enforced, so this seems selective, if not hypocritical. like I'm sure many of these parents get lunch at their favorite unregulated taco truck or halal chicken cart.

when you think about what was going on in NYC parks/playgrounds a couple decades ago, ridding the world of ice cream vendors is laughable.

and of course a sign of progress,

it's selective, but I guess I have some sympathy that, well, if something presents a particular nuisance in your world, that's the thing you ask about. (like for instance I thought it was a good idea, a couple years ago, when they barred the ice cream trucks from playing their jingles while standing in one place, cause if they set up under your window for an hour every day holy crap would that drive you nuts.)

cause if they set up under your window for an hour every day holy crap would that drive you nuts

http://blogs.freshminds.co.uk/research/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/boombox.jpg

actually boomboxes were banned on the subway back in the 80s

boomboxes were banned everywhere ... you do not hear/see them now

I would totally rather hear a boombox than an hour of "Pop Goes the Weasel!"

reggaton, even?

I'd take an hour of Pop Goes the Weasel over my downstair's neighbor groove-funk-organ playing and the exercise bicycle lady across the alley's bad violin playing ...

hmm...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer

haha, v1ck1 from the Ch1p Shop is nice, but i specifically told her i wasn't having the twice-fried cherry pie last time. just SAY NO, Mom.

yall think this is fun and games until u live in a family neighborhood and u hear the mfing jingle btw 2pm and 6pm every day

max is out there every day.

surely there's an ice-cream scene in Mad Men with which to resolve this?

^^Quality post A+++ would read again

Perhaps I can reframe the issue: Can anyone among us honestly say that their childhood was poorer for having gotten to eat too much ice cream?!

i have cavities?

of course, that's now and not then. but i'm gonna go ahead and blame the ice cream man and his damn siren's song.

I guess I have some sympathy that, well, if something presents a particular nuisance in your world, that's the thing you ask about.

lol if u dont like sumthin just keep whining and whining and whining until u get ur way

entitled whiners ftw ~~~ fyi lil kids are tiresome & annoying full stop & once they get their way on this these retards would just find sumthin new to project their manifest inadequacies on to. cant wait until all the squirrels and birds in that park have 2 be exterminated becuz they were distracting sumbody's kidz alla time

I agree with all the parenting 101 folks here - if the worst thing happening in your neighborhood is a plenty of ice cream trucks, then you have it pretty good and stop whining

if not I know a nice place in Lancester, PA where you can move to with lots of peace and quiet and fresh air

Parents who play the My Child game to get others to be compliant = massive fucking DUD. Especially when the entitlement act is pointed at someone in the service industry.

http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/2009/08/how-do-u-deal-with-ur-parents-being-super-rich.html

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd120/hipsterrunoff/photographs/289186_21022.jpg

That's not a very big business jet. I'd bet it only cost $2-3 mil. There's also the chance that her parents are just co-owners. Not really a signifier of what I'd call "super-rich." Unless her dad's one of those "I didn't get rich by spending all my money on airplanes" kinda guys (always a possibility).

Oh wait, it took me this long to realize that was hipster runoff. That's probably just a model shoot or something.

glad 2 see i post on a message board w/ so many people who are just better than these silly parents

Max, it's just that most of our parents, however fucked-up, were better at this than these entitled idiots.

The ice-cream man used to visit the street where I lived until I was 10. For a few days he came around 6 o'clock (cue proto-ADD response from local kids), the parents complained amongst themselves about dinnertime ruin and finally one of the moms played fearless leader and asked the guy if he could re-adjust his route to arrive after dinner instead, with the implication it would be more profitable for him that way.

But the complaints are not just coming from effete organic-food zealots with too much time on their hands. The 18th Ward in Chicago, which banned ice cream vendors, is made up of working-class African-American families. Ms. Reiley is a stay-at-home mother. Ms. Heidel-Habluetzel is a real-estate agent who is an active volunteer at her children’s school. And Ms. Sell owns and runs a restaurant in Brooklyn with her husband, a chef. “I’m not a health freak by any means,” Ms. Sell said. “But I notice what happens to my daughter when she eats these sugar-filled things with all these additives.”

I like how the topic sentence is about how not all of the complaints are from yuppies, but then her list of examples of complaining parents in sentence three and four are all yuppies. "Working-class African-American families are against this too! But enough about them..."

first they came for the drug dealers, and i said nothing, because i was not a drug dealer
then they came for the ice cream vendors etc etc