How do you handle aging with different generations?

I age all of my sims and eventually I do allow them to become elders but I do it verrrrrrrry slowly. I have the game set to long life span and only turn on aging for about a week each season, I play with my seasons set to 4 weeks each. Sometimes I will go several seasons without turning on aging. I only turn on neighborhood stories when I have aging on. This allows the world to progress and age, it allows me plenty of time with my sims before the age up and die, and I'm still able to move through generations. 

I was thinking doing something like that, too I have aging off, and I only age up the younger Sims when I want them to progress to the next stage in their lives. I've been playing with my first generation couple since May 2023, I think, and I'm not sure I'm done with their story yet. I know I could keep them as ghosts, too, but maybe it's time to let them retire and maybe create an extra save for them in case I change my mind. 

Thanks for your input 😃

I agree that there is a need for a late adult stage, somewhere between "wants more kids-adult" and "ready for the grave-elders".  What I do, is that I use MCCC to set how long I want each stage to be, and for me, the adult stage is the huge long one. Then I use the in game CAS option to gradually age my sims. Give them wrinkles, lines by their mouths, bags under their eyes, change their posture or figure to better match their ages, change their hairstyle or hair color to better reflect their age, use clothing options to better reflect an older look. Some I give glasses.. 

I do eventually age them up to elders, but fairly late in their life, and when I do I again go over their body figure in CA= 1 S because it's just off. Raise their chests (give those elders a good bra!), fix their waistline to be more natural, fix their posture. Generally by doing that I feel aging is more natural and feels okay in my game. 

For me, I go with 1 sim year = 5 "real" years,  and then set ages after that. So baby, infant + toddler = 1 sim year, Child = 2 sim years, Teen = 1 (to be fair child and teen should be 1,5 each, but I like birthdays to be the same day every year), young adults = 2 sim years, and adulthood is a whopping 7 sim years, elder is 2 or 3 I think. I play historical gameplay so my sims have rather short lives, I intend to make adulthood longer as I get further in history. 

I usually have long life span enabled and then age up when I feel it's time. Newborns and infants I age very quickly because I don't really enjoy that life stage in the game. Toddlers get 3 to 4 Sim weeks. Children and Teens I usually age one Sim week after they achieve an A grade in school. If the Young Adults in the household are the parents of the Teens, I age them to adults when the children become Teens. Adults become Elders when the Teen children become Young Adults, but not immediately. Usually 1-2 Sim weeks after. At that point I will usually turn aging down to normal so that the Elders can pass when the time comes. Then I put aging back to long life span.

Yes, we sooo need a life state between Adult and Elder. I am now playing with aging off so I age my Sims, and also kill them, manually. My rule is that once a child becomes a teen and their biological parents are YA, I usually age those parents to Adult. If the parents are already Adults I don't usually age them until said kids are YAs. Because in my game the Adult stage is longer (from 30 years old-to around 60-65ish? even up to 70) than the YA stage (18-30 years old). The same when the first kids become YAs. Then the parents become Elders. I do sometimes keep their natural hair color instead of the grey/white they get when they become elders though. I find that the transition isn't so jarring.

I play on Long, but for a certain short amount of time I did turn aging off. I did my best to calculate what their ages would be after a time. The four Cantrell kids graduated High School early and went into Uni right afterward. Problem is, in my own game play I wrecked the timeline. Instead of one year passing for each Term, the kids were on an accelerated path, which meant all three terms were completed in the very same calendar year. Worked out for my young Global Superstar, who made a Clean Sweep of the Big Four Music Awards.

But he was still only seventeen when he graduated, after the fourth term.  His sister graduated at the end of the third term and went into the Starfleet Academy. I followed her story during this time, and after her fifth year, she was stationed aboard a starship for her first mission. Since she is the youngest of the first four kids in the Cantrell family, her being now 21 years of age, clearly a YA, this also meant her brothers were 22, 23 (rock star) and 24.  When I realized their mother was still a YA, I was like, holy cow, that doesn't happen unless she gave birth to all of them when she was but a teen. So, I changed her age up to adult. I use MCCC to adjust how many days into whatever age level, so that I can maintain the birth order.

As for not wanting the gray hair, take your Sim into cas.fulleditmode and select the color hair you want for them. Joe Cantrell, Sr., is about fifteen years older than his wife, so he's further along toward Elder.

I end up just restarting my family.  I have no clue how many iterations I'm in, now. But I did something really different this time. I decided to restart, since we were getting this, er, lovely, new forum. I decided the first of the five children would start the game as a toddler and an infant. Rather that allude to their past history, this way I played it out. It's been very fulfilling for me, and I am able to better explore the depths (I hope) of their personalities. I am currently writing about them in Creative Corner.

Knowing we play the game differently my input might be less interesting, but... I play rotationally with aging off. Every New Years Eve I turn aging on for just one night. Assuming sims still age up at midnight, only. Then I age up all households including non played , so they all sage with the same pace.

In addition to this, and this is what might help you too, I keepo track on every played sim wirth details, in a spreadsheet. One line per sim. This includes their age, making it easy for me to see when each sim is due to age up. I play on average (I think), 13yo = teen, 25yo = YA, 50ya = A, and 70ya = E.  Only in very few cases a sim have already aged up when I stop by to age him, up.

Re the transmition from A to E. I think the change from Child to Teen is a bigger problem. Sometimes I make the A look a bit older wjhen there's only a handful years until Elderhood. This is easy to add by face details, adding glasses if needed, adjusting their clothing and makeup, and not the keast: I love the hair color where black and brown has a hint of grey. I so wish we had this option for red and blond hair as well. For some Elders I might make them a tad younger for the first handful of elder years. The same hair color (brown or black with hint of grey) is again perfect). It helps knowing how much a certain sim will care about these things. And if say an elderly woman will go for makeup or just skip most of it. I know these things from my residents registry, so I can adjust it according tho the sim's wishes, securing some variety. 

Thank you! I tried the hair colour thing even before reading this post, and while it doesn't work for my Sim mom because she's blond, it should work for her brown-haired husband. I was thinking about adding glasses, too. I like the idea of turning on aging on a specific date, I'll keep that in mind :)

In my game, I assume that the adult stage lasts until the early 60s, mostly because we don't have a middle-age life state. In my main household, the parents are adults, their two oldest daughters are young adults and the other three kids are teenagers, one of them has just started college. I usually age up teenagers to young adults once they have graduated and start their first job, simply because they start college at around seventeen, so I'm assuming they're maybe twenty-one when they graduate, depending on how long it takes them.