For all my sims the menu says "Check in on..." and I don't have Growing Together. Doesn't seem to matter who my sims are talking to. I don't even know what "Check in on" is supposed to mean - it's not an expression I've ever heard - and it definitely doesn't have the same connotation as "Ask about Day". I also only have "Gossip about Family Drama" and not the old form, and again, it's not an appropriate expression when it's applied to everyone they meet, no matter who they are.
Overall the new menu layout is both good and bad, for some things the grouping makes it easier to find stuff, rather than flip through 50 pages of options, but the initial menu still contain a bunch of irrelevant options - like leftovers from past jobs and questions the sim already know the answer to (like how they can ask their spouse if they're single) - and it'd make more sense if it contained options relevant to their wants and fears. Because of this we're still required to dig into the specific menus, and then it becomes really annoying when things get renamed for no reason. Like it wasn't bad enough that many of the "discuss" and "share" conversation topics change depending on their mood and traits, just to make it harder to find the right one
So can confirm that buying Growing Together fixed this for me. But that's not an acceptable solution for people who don't actually want the pack.
