I'm Surrounded by Infants Challenge Rules
This challenge is not for the faint of heart. Your mission is to raise seven children from infancy to young adulthood, making sure they finish high school with an A average. Sound simple? There’s a catch: you cannot control any of the children as active characters.
Set Up
Start by creating a guardian. The guardian can be a young adult or adult. They can have any characteristics. You can create them using My Sim Story, if you like. Next you have to add your starting number of infants. The infants do not have to be the genetic children of the guardian. Infant traits must be randomized. You will add a number of infants based on your preferred level of difficulty:
Once you’ve created the guardian and the infants, move them into a house they can afford using the starting funds that the game gives them. Set lifespan to normal in game options. If your guardian was assigned a rabbit hole or active career through My Sim Story, have them quit. Semi-active (i.e. has a telework option) or freelance careers are fine. The point is that the guardian cannot have a career that requires them to leave the children. Even if the starting career is allowed, feel free to change it if you’d prefer to earn money doing something else.
Adding More Infants
Age Up Criteria
Disqualification
What exactly does “not controlling them” mean?
Other Rules/Restrictions
You cannot use any cheat codes or mod settings that provide an advantage in the challenge compared to someone who doesn’t use them. You also can’t use any vanilla in-game hacks to give a child more time in their current life stage.
Good luck! Hopefully you won’t end up with infants passed out in the kitchen and toddlers so desperate for attention that they start waylaying strangers in front of the house (that happened).
Set Up
Start by creating a guardian. The guardian can be a young adult or adult. They can have any characteristics. You can create them using My Sim Story, if you like. Next you have to add your starting number of infants. The infants do not have to be the genetic children of the guardian. Infant traits must be randomized. You will add a number of infants based on your preferred level of difficulty:
- Normal Mode: Start with two infants
- Challenge Mode: Start with four infants
- Hardcore: Start with seven infants. Disclosure: I haven’t actually tried this setting, so I can’t swear that it’s even feasible. If some brave soul out there is feeling ambitious . . . yeah, that’s a good word for it, “ambitious” . . . they are welcome to give this a try.
Once you’ve created the guardian and the infants, move them into a house they can afford using the starting funds that the game gives them. Set lifespan to normal in game options. If your guardian was assigned a rabbit hole or active career through My Sim Story, have them quit. Semi-active (i.e. has a telework option) or freelance careers are fine. The point is that the guardian cannot have a career that requires them to leave the children. Even if the starting career is allowed, feel free to change it if you’d prefer to earn money doing something else.
Adding More Infants
Spoiler
Regardless of how many infants you start out with, you’ll have to raise seven of them eventually. You can add more infants through household editor. You can also add more infants through game play: adoption, science baby (with or without a partner) or pregnancy.
- Normal Mode: add one or two additional infants at a time. If you are adding them through pregnancy, you must start the pregnancy before the current youngest ages up to a child. If you’re not going the pregnancy route, add the next infant(s) before the current youngest ages up to a child.
- Challenge Mode: add three new infants at once. You must add them before the previous four age up to teens. If you go the pregnancy route and you have a mod that allows this, feel free to cheat triplets. Otherwise, if you don’t end up with triplets, add more infants right away through household editor to make up three.
- Disqualification: If a child become disqualified from the challenge (see below), you must add another infant at some point to replace them. Follow Normal Mode rules for adding the replacement infant.
Age Up Criteria
Spoiler
Each life stage has criteria for aging up. Other than the newborn stage, you are not required to age them up as soon as they meet the criteria. If you want to keep them in that stage for longer to accomplish some purpose (e.g. helping Toddlers achieve the Happy Toddler trait) you can do that. When a child ages up, you must randomize their traits and aspiration.
Each life stage has criteria for aging up. Other than the newborn stage, you are not required to age them up as soon as they meet the criteria. If you want to keep them in that stage for longer to accomplish some purpose (e.g. helping Toddlers achieve the Happy Toddler trait) you can do that. When a child ages up, you must randomize their traits and aspiration.
- Newborn: If you have a science baby or pregnancy, they start out as newborns. They must be aged up to infant immediately. There is no newborn phase in this challenge.
- Infants without Growing Together-Age them up to Toddler at least 72 hours after they are added to the game. I recommend scheduling an event on the calendar so you remember when to do this.
- Infants with Growing Together-Achieve six milestones before aging them up to Toddler.
- Toddlers-Reach level two in all toddler skills before aging them up to Child
- Child-achieve a B in school before aging them up to Teen.
- Teen-achieve an A in school before aging them up to Young Adult. When they age up to Young adult, you can pick their final trait and aspiration.
- Handling Young Adults-Once you have successfully aged up a child to Young Adult, you can move them out at any time. If you decide to keep them in the household for a while, they become controllable characters. They can do housework (cooking, cleaning, etc.). They can have any job, including rabbit hole. They are not, however, allowed to engage in parenting or childcare activities. If they do this autonomously, cancel the action.
Disqualification
Spoiler
The age up rules are mainly there to slow you don’t a bit so that you don’t skip over the life stages (other than newborn). Even so, these requirements are absolute. You cannot age up a child who hasn’t met the age up criteria, even if it’s their birthday. If the game auto-ages them and they still haven’t met the criteria, they become disqualified from the challenge and they won’t count toward your seven total. A child can also be disqualified if they are taken away by social services, if you accidentally age up the wrong kid, or if you accidentally adopt a kid who’s a toddler or older.
When a child becomes disqualified, you can move them to a different household using household manager, or you can continue raising them if you’re not ready to say goodbye. If you continue raising a disqualified child, you can play them as an active character and there are no rules for aging them up or anything else. Just remember that nothing they do counts toward the challenge. Once they age up to young adult, you must move them out immediately.
When a child becomes disqualified, you can move them to a different household using household manager, or you can continue raising them if you’re not ready to say goodbye. If you continue raising a disqualified child, you can play them as an active character and there are no rules for aging them up or anything else. Just remember that nothing they do counts toward the challenge. Once they age up to young adult, you must move them out immediately.
What exactly does “not controlling them” mean?
Spoiler
You are not allowed to direct the children to perform actions as the active character. There is one exception. If you are ready to age one of the children up and the guardian has prepared a cake with candles, you can select the child as the active character and direct them to blow out the candles.
If you have the Parenthood pack, you’re allowed to influence the children while playing as the guardian.
You can also select a child as the active character at any time in order to check on their needs and progress, or to check their inventory and move things out if you need them for something else.
Children cannot travel to community lots without the guardian.
If you have the Parenthood pack, you’re allowed to influence the children while playing as the guardian.
You can also select a child as the active character at any time in order to check on their needs and progress, or to check their inventory and move things out if you need them for something else.
Children cannot travel to community lots without the guardian.
Other Rules/Restrictions
You cannot use any cheat codes or mod settings that provide an advantage in the challenge compared to someone who doesn’t use them. You also can’t use any vanilla in-game hacks to give a child more time in their current life stage.
Good luck! Hopefully you won’t end up with infants passed out in the kitchen and toddlers so desperate for attention that they start waylaying strangers in front of the house (that happened).
