Wanted: A Toy Truck. No, Not That One.

The very specific, mercurial tastes of a toddler

A popular children’s book franchise that you’d think my truck-obsessed daughter would like, but no. / (Little Blue Truck Makes a Friend)

The woman at the toy store asked if I was looking for anything in particular. I made the mistake of telling her that I was looking for a truck. 

“Oh, we’ve got so many trucks!” she said, leading me toward an aisle and interaction that I knew would only bring frustration and awkwardness. “How old is your kid?” 

The woman at the shop pointed out a few options, but none of them seemed right. I thanked her and she got the message and left me alone. I hate having to tell people who are trying to help me that they are not in fact helping. 

My daughter is really into trucks right now. She can’t get enough trucks. When she hears a truck rumbling down our street, she’ll point at the door and say “Truck.” When we’re on a walk and anything from a mail truck to a semi truck rolls by, she points and says “Truck.” On garbage day, she wants to be carried to the end of our front path so that she can witness her favorite truck in action. If the fate of the world ever depended on one hero’s ability to point out every truck, she’s your girl. 

One would think that this meant that she’ll play with any old toy truck I throw her way. The answer is no.

None of the ways that stores organize or categorize trucks tell me anything about whether my kid will want to play with it or not. I can’t gauge anything from a picture online. I need to pick it up, get a sense of its heft, give it a couple of practice zooms, see if it makes any noise and, if so, what kind of noise. Can she push the truck while walking? Can other toys fit inside the truck? Can she ride on the truck? But even with all that information, sometimes I’m wrong. 

The same goes for books. You can tell me everything that an adult would use to describe a book for children– “It’s a board book about a tiny bunny who saves the day!”-- but that would get me no closer to understanding whether or not my kid would stare at it for several minutes or nonchalantly toss it aside. What colors are prominent in the illustrations? How dark are the lines? Are there flaps? What shape is the book? Do the animals make silly faces? Are the bunnies wearing human clothes? Are there any illustrations where the bunny drives a truck? (You’d think that my daughter would like books that are about trucks, such as the ubiquitous Little Blue Truck book franchise. Nope. Does not give a shit about the little blue truck. She doesn’t like trucks that have faces, only trucks without faces.)

Children’s television is also hit-or-miss. I hate using a screen as a babysitter, but I also dislike it when my clingy 18-month-old follows me into the bathroom and empties my makeup bag item by item on the floor in front of me or stands outside of the closed door screaming “MAMA!!!” as though my crime of wanting to take a shit in peace were worthy of a call to Child Protective Services. And so sometimes I try to put her in front of the TV and sneak off alone for some precious bathroom time. 

My daughter has seen every Bluey episode currently available to stream in the US at least half a dozen times, and so I’m trying to get her to branch out in case one day we wake up and– god forbid– Bluey is no longer effective. For a few days, she was interested in a truly mediocre AppleTV+ animated show called Eva the Owlet, but now she just gets angry and yells TRUCK! at the screen when I try to put it on. She’s tolerated the new Frog and Toad series on the same streamer, but I can’t stand having that show on in the background because the speaking voice of Frog sounds exactly like Florida governor Ron De Santis. 

As a result, we’ve got piles of books my daughter couldn’t care less about. We’ve got toys she won’t play with but that she will throw onto the floor for me to pick up. We’ve got streaming services chock full of subpar children’s programming, programming that sounds good on paper but in practice simply will not do. 

It’s as though adults sorting things for toddlers into categories have lost the language toddlers use to categorize things. Toddlers don’t care if a show is about puppet friends learning sharing their cultures with each other– the adults who are selecting shows for the kids might want to know this, but the toddlers who watch the shows probably would rather know if any of the puppets wears a sparkly shirt or if there are any episodes where they visit a construction site. Toddlers don’t care that Waffles & Mochi are traveling to Peru to learn about potatoes– but are there any baby llamas? Are there any scenes where somebody plays the drums? IS THERE A GARBAGE TRUCK?

The most widely-known quote of former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart is “I’ll know it when I see it.” 

Stewart was talking about hard core pornography. But I think about his words often, now whenever I’m searching for a very specific toy or perusing the “for kids” section of a streaming service or a book, trying to assess whether or not my toddler will actually give a shit about it. Descriptions alone don’t cut it. I’ll know it when I see it. Sometimes. 

I ended up leaving the little toy store with a small dump truck. It checked all of the boxes that my toddler seems to like in a toy truck— bright colors, some moving parts, small enough for her to pick up and carry, a toy boulder in its tailgate, no human-like features. When I got home and presented it to her, her face lit up in a smile as she eagerly took the toy from my hands, tossed the truck aside, and spent the rest of the day playing with the boulder.