So, today I was playing sims. My sims family consists of a couple, a cat & dog, and two daughter (toddler & child). The couple started watching romance and things happened, but now the wife’s pregnant with twin girls! I don’t know how people actually parent so many kids! Ok, but anyways, I was considering just giving up on the save but I held back and decided that because I was getting so attatached to the couple and current two daughters I would perserve. I though about how I was going to do this and thought up the idea that we should make a parenting tips and tricks thread! So, here it is :) On this thread, we can give other simmers advice for raising children :)

Love the idea of this thread! I think it's hard to raise toddlers in TS4, I usually make one parent stay-at-home because I want my toddlers to build up skills and that's not possible when they are in daycare. Also, when they have higher skills, toddlers cry less and are less annoying. Kids don't take much care but the parents can always help with their homework. I always feel so much relief when toddlers grow up into kids!And this isn't advice but I always take pictures of my sims' kids and teens. It's so nice to see them grow up!

Toddlers definately get a lot easier to manage with higher skills. If I have a single toddler, I will let Mum and Dad trade off working days. Sometimes they have schedules that don’t overlap too much. Someone is always home with the toddler/s. I find my families with very young children seldom get out of the house.With a larger family I would be looking to have a stay at home parent.With my first set of twins (which I have just now) I gave up on the highchair from the beginning. It’s too tricky when the toddlers wake up starving to get them both food in the high chair. They help themselves to a meal from the counter and go eat it on a chair in the living room instead. Mum has been getting up before the toddlers to cook a big group meal for this (usually pancakes, omelet or French toast).Independent toddlers can begin to potty train themselves from the start. This was real handy.

(1) Keep everything a toddler needs on the same floor. When I first started playing with toddlers, the family lived in a two-story home. I had their bedrooms upstairs and the rest of the home downstairs. Took to long to get the toddlers to get where they needed to go to do what they needed to do.(2) At dinner time have someone make the largest serving meal (I think it is 8) and put it in the refrigerator. Toddlers always wake up extremely hungry. Take the meal out of the fridge and place it near the toddler's bed. If it is close enough, the child does not even have to leave their bed to start eating. After they have taken a plate, put the serving platter back in the refrigerator to serve at a later time.(3) Keep a trash can next to the potty seat, preferably in the same room as the toddler's bed.(4) Don't bother with the high chair, more of a pain in the rear than anything else.(5) Reading a bedtime story cuts way down on the chances of a toddler waking up from a nightmare.(6) Allowing a toddler to make their messes, actually builds a skill - forget which one it is at the moment. If you also have a child or teen in the home, have the child or teen clean up the mess, it will increase their responsibility points.

@LaBlue0314 .Really good suggestions. My method is to just use traits that make raising them easier, but that gets boring.

I think parenting when it comes to toddlers is good, because it's a bit up to us whether we want a full detailed toddler raising experience, or we want to go the easy road (which might very well include some heavy crying, so I guess it depends on how attached you are to your family). It also depends on how many days your toddlers will stay toddlers. I normally don't raise them perfectly because they will start school in just 4 years, but if you play them for longer periods, you might benefit from good routines.I raised triplets, which means you really can't expect to get much else done than serving your toddlers. I had to give in and find easy road solutions.1) Forget about highchairs, they are extremely time consuming and confusing, because sims are less rational than they should be. Say a kid is in the chair already, then parent wants to give food, parent might take kid out of chair, put it on floor, go sit on a bed just to ask kid if he/she wants some food. It takes 45 sim minutes, and before understanding how confusing these situations are designed, you might even cancel the actions because it only tells you they will sit down and talk, the feeding interaction isn't cued until later...2) If you leave a group meal serving on a table that toddler can reach, toddler will go grab a meal and sit in an ordinary armchair or sofa to eat. I did this only when parents were exhausted and all in the red. Good to know toddlers can help themselves, I don't know if this requires some walking skills, though.3) You can also feed them fruits (and flowers!) from your parent's inventory. A great time saver!4) If several adults/elders in the household, lock the nursery door to all except a few chosen. A toddler in need of something seems to attract the masses, everyone flocks to the crib at the same time. This might be caused by each sim's traits/skills but in most bigger families it gets too crowded in the nursery and your active sim is not necessarily first in that queue. It's much easier when allowing access to just a few.5) Make sure to provide toddlers with skill building toys. When older sims play with them, they learn twice as fast. Might give the toddler benefits later, depending on your ambitions for them, of course.

Parenting Tips & Tricks! | EA Forums

JestTru
Seasoned Newcomer
6 years ago
When having multiple child Sims I try to only have one toddler at a time because I like to build up their skills and they do seem like a full time job in game just as in real life. My child Sims i try to complete the aspiration selected and I choose different aspirations for different kids to mix it up. I also like to take them out to the parks and make friends. Teen Sims I actually haven't done much with other than keep needs filled and build skills up for whatever job I'm going to give them, just try and set them up to send them out into the world.
Sharooonia
New Spectator
4 years ago
I don't find it all that challenging raising toddlers in the Sims 4. I find them quite independent. Like they teach themselves everything except potty and even the potty training doesn't take that long.

The only thing I do to make things easier is having group meals in the fridge for times when the adults might be sleeping and I have a mod installed to deal with the high chair issues because I love seeing my toddlers being fed in high chairs.
texxx78
4 years ago
@Sharonia would you please share the mod you use for high chairs?
Sharooonia
New Spectator
4 years ago
"telmarina;c-17828724" wrote:
@Sharonia would you please share the mod you use for high chairs?

Oh of course. It's by Zero here... https://www.patreon.com/posts/toddlers-less-31168990 You can just search Zero Less Call out of High Chair if you are uncomfortable clicking the link.
Paiblin
4 years ago
I’m a little late, but I think I handled my last twin pregnancy in the sims pretty good so I’ll throw in my tips.

When my sim and his wife got pregnant for the first time and it turned out to be twins I almost passed out. I was trying to do a perfect save where I can’t change anything and can’t cheat (almost like irl) and I felt like getting twins would make that so much harder. I was so panicked about it I read real life parenting guides for like two days before even opening my saved game. Turns out real life tips work pretty well in the sims too, here’s what I learned:

(1) If you get twins, once they’re born, always care for them both simultaneously and fill up their needs simultaneously. If one is hungry but one is not, still feed them both at the same time. Try to synchronize them as much as possible to save your own time and resources.

(2) Make a schedule, and keep it as tight as possible. As I recently learned, the best way to keep any family functional and productive in the sims is to do certain things at a set time every day. This one was a little difficult for me at first, and you’ll need some time to figure out what works for you, but my current schedule is the following:

6:00 am: wake up and eat breakfast immediately. (meal is pre made in the fridge, I just put it on the nearest dining table) the older sims usually get ready for school and work on their own right after that initial meal, and my toddlers usually only wake up with their hunger need low while everything else is good.

The sims are usually fed and taken care of at work and school, but when they’re at home and I’m in charge I feed them lunch at 2pm.
If they’re at work I skip lunch and instead give them an early dinner at 4 or 5pm. When they’re at home all day I usually give them dinner at 6pm.

Toddlers then go to bed at 7pm, Children go around 8:30pm and teens and adults are in bed at 10pm. The adults start cooking for tomorrow at around 9pm.

This schedule works pretty good for me, doing things this way has resulted in the most stable family I have ever created in the sims so far. I’ve found it’s much easier to keep this schedule when the kids are toddlers though, children always seem to want to do their own thing lol.

(3) Also, you might want to hire a maid, the house will get super dirty with toddlers (especially if there are more of them) and worrying about it takes too much time.

(4) Oh and if you have multiple floors you should have a dining room on every floor. I traditionally have all my bedrooms on an upper floor and if I had had breakfast in the kitchen/dining room area downstairs my toddlers would never be able to eat. I decided to build a dining room upstairs just for breakfast use so that everyone can get to their food immediately after waking up, toddlers included.

(5) This has already been suggested, but you could also give your toddlers some fruit in their inventory for crisis situations. I used to live by it but for me it triggered an unlimited fruit bug that annoyed the heck out of me so I dropped it. It’s very good for keeping your kid from being taken by the social services though.

Good luck in raising those sims to everyone on this thread!
simgirl1010
Hero
4 years ago
@Paiblin those are awesome tips! And welcome to the forum! :)
Fanphoria
New Spectator
4 years ago
Most of it's already been covered, but I'll just add :smile:

teens and to a certain extent children as well can help with taking care of younger children, and if you have seasons and have them join scouts they'll earn some scout badges for it too lol.

the "good schools" lot trait will help your kids and teens get A's pretty fast and without too much work. the "homey" lot trait is also pretty good, as it helps cooking, repairs and stuff go well and turn out good quality even when the parent isn't really in that good of mood.

try to avoid aging your teen up to adult when they're in the middle of a mood swing. depending on what mood it is this can literally be deadly lol.
justme22
4 years ago
If you have Parenthood, keep the babies as babies as long as possible -- interacting with the baby is a good way to build Parenting skill fairly easily, so by the time they age to toddler you can do more things for them.

I second the idea of dragging a plate of food up to the toddler bedroom/nursery; if you have a Sim who's going to be a parent try and get them the Fresh Chef aspiration reward before they start having kids, as then the food never spoils and you can keep it in the bedroom indefinitely.

Don't feed too much sugar to toddlers -- that includes the Fruit and Yogurt Parfait. Trust me on this.

If you've got teens they can help out a lot with toddler care -- children can also entertain them which gives Mom & Dad a break.
fancygirlElle
6 years ago
"Freechheit;c-17009570" wrote:
This is how I 'survived' my quadruplets:

(1) I paused the game a lot. "P" was my lifesaver.

(2) I didn't use the highchair. The plates were put in the nursery, sometimes on the floor even. It is good if the toddlers also have a couch to sit on and a table to put the plates afterwards. If the plate is close to the bed, the toddler doesn't need to get up and eats in bed.

(3) One parent stayed at home with the kids. The other one took some days off. If there was a lot to do and my Sim was very tired, I hired a nanny.

(4) The parents were reading bedtime stories every evening, to reduce nightmares. And I put up those lamps that came with parenthood to reduce nightmares

(5) Let them hug Blarfy! The social skill will rise very quickly. :)

(6) I put fruits in the inventory of the toddlers. They can eat fruits when you click on them. That was my emergency-move if they were nearly starving. It doesn't raise the hunger bar very high, but it saves some time.

(7) Sometimes the parents were allowed to drink a potion to max out their needs. (Okay, although this is part of the gameplay, this is kind of cheaty...)

(7) I didn't do this and maybe this might considered cheating, but it is possible to create a group with the grandparents. You can choose cleaning, gardening, fixing broken objects and cooking as group activities, and they can help you out. I think I will do this next time, because it is kind of natural to have the rest of the family over to help. Especially with more than one toddler. :smile:

Quadruplets! I would’ve died! How is that even possible? Did that sim family have any other children?
texxx78
4 years ago
"Sharonia;c-17828738" wrote:
"telmarina;c-17828724" wrote:
@Sharonia would you please share the mod you use for high chairs?

Oh of course. It's by Zero here... https://www.patreon.com/posts/toddlers-less-31168990 You can just search Zero Less Call out of High Chair if you are uncomfortable clicking the link.

Thank you so much ?