best time to age up teens?

Before Parenthood, I found Teens particularly tedious to stay around being a Teen once they hit the highest grades in school, and since I play on Long I just sometimes bother with getting them an early birthday so they can move on up in the world. Now that I have Parenthood, I can't just skip the Teens so quickly since I now have character values to develop, but that doesn't mean that I don't still find Teens boring.

I am very surprised that you want to max out everything like character values for everyone. Wouldn't that make all your sims be the same? I just play differently which includes intentionally lowering the values to get negative traits for certain characters. I age my teens when the story in my head makes the most sense.

"paradiseplanet;c-16305588" wrote:
Before Parenthood, I found Teens particularly tedious to stay around being a Teen once they hit the highest grades in school, and since I play on Long I just sometimes bother with getting them an early birthday so they can move on up in the world. Now that I have Parenthood, I can't just skip the Teens so quickly since I now have character values to develop, but that doesn't mean that I don't still find Teens boring.

I'm not much of a family-style player myself but thought I'd give it a try since I haven't done much with my parenthood pack, aside from building stuff. I discovered the child phase is probably the easiest for bringing up the character values. I found them much harder to raise with teens. And those blasted "ask for advice"are the worst. No matter how you choose to answer, one of the values will be affected negatively. After a certain point I had to turn off free will as the sim kids and teens are so compelled to ask for advice all the time that they're actually doing more harm than good.

"alan650111;c-16305789" wrote:
I am very surprised that you want to max out everything like character values for everyone. Wouldn't that make all your sims be the same? I just play differently which includes intentionally lowering the values to get negative traits for certain characters. I age my teens when the story in my head makes the most sense.

This is mainly for just two of my sims. I normally just play young adult or adult sims, so this will be the first time I've raised sims from toddler, child or teen! As these two are the first ones I wanted to see how they'll be with the new traits from the parenthood pack. You have a point about letting each one be different. I do have other sims that I'm less focused on, so I'm not going to worry about them too much......besides, it is too much work!

I age them up when they max out their values and get that A, too. I play on Long and also don't wish to risk undoing all of that hard work. LOL Do what's comfortable for you.

"NorthDakotaGamer;c-16305585" wrote:
I play with aging on normal, so I found the perfect balance. I also use MCCC to modify the age setting too. My settings with the mod are as follows; baby-2 days, toddler-1 day (I also age up immediately as I HATE that stage), kid-14 days, teen-14 days, YA-25 days, adult-20 days, elder-7 days.

I've tried playing with aging, but find I just enjoy the game more when I'm in control. I like to take my time, even IRL. :smile:

"GalacticGal;c-16306359" wrote:
I age them up when they max out their values and get that A, too. I play on Long and also don't wish to risk undoing all of that hard work. LOL Do what's comfortable for you.

I knew there was a reason I've been avoiding having sim kids. Guess now I'm stuck with them......until I age them up!

Teens are weird in Sims 4. Parenthood added a bit of character to them but not enough to make me super enthused or want to play them anymore than I would an adult. Once they get an A in school I age them up. Also when they age up from a child I dress them like an adult because I don't want to have to go back and edit them again. It was never like this for me in previous Sims games.

For me, it really depends on the sim. Some of my teens are active in clubs and I set certain goals for them within those clubs for them to meet before aging up. Some of my teens are academically oriented, so I get them to the best grade possible and have them complete all the projects from parenthood perfectly before aging. Most of my teens, I wait until I max out at least 2 or 3 of the parenthood traits, either in the green or red depending on my plans for them as adults.

I tend to look at the teen life stage as I would the teenage years for humans; it’s all about building good social skills and friendships, falling in and out of love, going to school, part time jobs, and just figuring out who they want to be as adults....or in sim terms, who I want them to be as adults. It’s your last chance to set them up for success or failure as YAs, to make starting a career and finding someone to settle down with easy or challenging.

For me, that’s the fun part. Will Cassandra Goth marry her high school sweetheart, or find that her pursuit of musical perfection is more important than romance for a while? Will Malcolm Landgraab follow in his mother’s footsteps, or have a change of heart and clean up his act? Will Luna Villareal grow out of her shallow “appearances are everything” mentality, or will she become even more of a mean girl with age?

Discovering the direction I want them to take is what ultimately decides when they age up.

I usually wait to maybe like 5 or 3 days before they age up anyways. I play on normal.
But babies I age up at once, I like the toddlers though ^^ I don't do much with the values usually, they go as they go, but I try to effect them with going out and doing charity work thingy from time to time