nraas

One thing that bothers me is that my sims can't get some ice cream from the truck in front of their house without calling a babysitter. Seriously?
I've set GoHere so that babies and toddlers can be home alone and while the notification to either stay at home or call a babysitter is gone, the game automatically calls a babysitter instead. Do I have to change other settings?

The problem there is that the ice cream truck is off your household lot so using it is equivalent to leaving home. You can't leave babies or toddlers home alone on the actively played household; even if you could, that would probably trigger a child care social worker scenario. I believe that the GoHere setting is for inactives.

I've had babysitters standing on the edge of the lot before upon their arrival. One step off and one of my sims gets teleported back home so that the young kids aren't left unattended (that's annoying too).

If you don't want a babysitter or daycare, then there needs to be another older member of the household at home to stay with the kids or else you need to bring them with you somehow even if you are only intending to go a few feet off the lot.

So the game thinks it's safer for them if I put them down at the street instead of five steps away in their crib. Or that my poor single mother has to pay 75 simoleons to be able to buy ice crem for 5 simoleons. ... We need a facepalm smiley.
Thanks for your help.

Well since you put it that way, your sim might want to check out the benefits of having food delivery. They can't get a §5 ice cream cone that way and it's not entirely what I would call cost-effective, but maybe a good way to stock up on group platters of more expensive desserts that can be delivered?
http://modthesims.info/d/413311

It's not just the ice cream. What I'm looking for is the freedom to let my sim pick up the gem/rock/wnatever that's just three steps away from the lot. Or go fishing at that river right next to the lot while the baby is sleeping at home, close enough that I can hear when it wakes up. Just those close to home activities, not leaving the kids alone all day until they starve to death. I was hoping GoHere would work that way that I could disable babysitters for those moments and turn them back on afterwards.
So food delivery isn't exactly what I'm looking for.

I've always been annoyed by this behavoir when my parents just need to step down the road to buy groceries to be able to fix meals and end up having to pay for a baby sitter they can't even afford to pay for when one stayed unemployed just to stay home to take care of their toddler instead of paying a sitter for that.I use a Mod that disables the NPC social workers because they caused a few saves to become corrupted from taking children away.