Options with Toddler when both parents are working?

You can hire a nanny for them or send them to day care free which is a rabbit hole.

Mmm.
If you hire a nanny, do you get to stay behind (as the player) and watch what is happening? Would you be able to get a skilled toddler to ask for food and such? (I've heard some/most of the nannies are really bad at their jobs).


I imagine the rabbit hole option is much like when the adults go to work or the children to school? A placeholder and not much more, without ability to really fill needs much less raise skills etc?

If you hire a nanny, your toddler remains at the house and the nanny will show up. Many people find they have bad nannies, but if you use your toddler you can get everything done you want, just have the toddler ask for potty help and food and play help. If you wait for the nanny to do it on her own don't expect anything to happen, but having the toddler ask usually does it in my game
I sometimes use the day-care option when they still need to level everything and don't have a certain goal for the day and I just want the day to pass fast

You can hire a nanny or teleport toddlers and babies to daycare.
I'd recommend the daycare, because all the toddler skills will be raised there. It really helped me out when my sims had to take care of two toddlers.

So daycare gives toddler skills?

I would always recommend to send your toddlers to daycare, it's really boring to stay with the nanny and the toddler until the parents are back. I sometimes play a single mom with her toddler daughter, the mother works in the social media career and can (thank goodness) work from home, but when she goes to work and the nanny is there, they always make food in party size (too much for a household of 2 sims), which I can't even drop into the fridge, so it spoils very quickly.
These nannies are just useless.
@EgonVM I never noticed that the daycare gives and raises toddler skills, another reason to choose this option. :)

Am I the only one who drafts their own playable teens for that purpose?

Couple of minutes before work invite over the teen (or teleport them in using cheats/mods or even use Household management for the transfer), add them to the household and, voila, playable nanny. Once the parents are back home the teen gets put a small item into their inventory as payment and then dismissed.

But then again, I always was and always will be a happy micromanager ;)

Yes, I use playable nannies! Neighborhood teenagers or young adult college students, or grandparents.

Invite them over. Debug cheats > add to family. It's super quick. I pay them (the teenage neighbors, not the grandparents, lol!) by inventory items, too.

My nanny would cook a meal and leave it on the counter then go and watch TV most of the day. Every great once and a while she would play with him. He had to ask her for everything else. I just used the time to get his skill levels up with the wabbit tablet, look at books, potty, dance, what is this?, and talking.

"EgonVM;c-15933201" wrote:
You can hire a nanny or teleport toddlers and babies to daycare.
I'd recommend the daycare, because all the toddler skills will be raised there. It really helped me out when my sims had to take care of two toddlers.

I never knew they got skills when at day care! I always hired a nanny so that I could have my toddler work on skills.