This is an issue I've had several times now, and I must admit its got me baffled. My sims have large families, with parents often spending the vast majority of their time caring for toddlers, of which there are almost always one or two around. Naturally I have lots of family sims with the extreme fertility aspiration reward. All is well, but as soon as a pair of siblings reaches the "child" life stage, I start to have instances of inexplicable sibling hate. All of a sudden the camera cuts to a cloud of dust as the two siblings fight it out... but why? I never see any precursors, it just seems to come out of nowhere. Is that built into the game to represent sibling rivalry, or am I doing something wrong?

I had my first fight between kids the other day. Mine were cousins, but they lived in the same house. A problem I have is kids being born with very few nice points, I'm not sure why, I use the batbox to avoid first born syndrome. I find it fairly easy to build good relationships between siblings, I make them play with each other and tell each other jokes.

Siblings are like best buddies in my game, at least.

I suspect it's built into the game to some extent, but you can't deny it's realistic. In Real Life, even children who usually get on well together can suddenly start to fight. I played with my sister a lot, and, as a result fought with her quite often too: our games gave us something to fight about! There's probably a bad relationship between Sims who autonomously start to fight, but it only takes a couple of rejected interactions to turn a neutral relationship into a bad one.

I've found a partial way to resolve such conflicts: When Lllith Pleasant was visiting her grandparents, I made her selectable and got her to call Angela on the telephone. They couldn't poke each other over the 'phone! They still have a long way to go to build a good long-term relationship, but the Enemy tag has gone.

Have them play on the activity table for a day and they will be best buds.

Has one of the kids beaten the other at a video game recently? Does one of the other of them have very low aspiration, like would cause aspiration breakdown in an adult? The first will cause temporary furiousness on the part of the loser (with a red portrait of the winner and everything) which can lead to fights depending on personality, and the second will cause a tantrum or a fight as a way to relieve the feelings.

Look at the relationship bars when a new baby is born. Very often, any child-age or younger siblings will have very low or even negative relationships toward the newborn; and twins will also often start out with low relationships toward each other. Sibling rivalry was built into the system. And it's not just low-nice point siblings who do it, either!

If you don't want it to escalate to sibling hatred, you need to address it early. Get children to talk to their mother's belly and to the baby when a parent or teen is holding it. Direct toddlers and children to play nicely with each other, at the activity table or with peek-a-boo. Sometimes if I expect a large, close-spaced family I'll go out of the way to teach older children the nursery rhyme so they'll be able to teach it to younger siblings who are toddlers during their child stage. Monitor action queues and nip teasing in the bud. It won't be difficult to make all your near-age siblings BFF.

Conversely, of course, if you want active sibling rivalry going on, prevent all these positive interactions and encourage negative ones. It won't be difficult, either.

It's not the Nice points that are the issue. My game's Beaker twins have 0 Nice points and they quickly became the best of friends as kids and easily get along with Nice sims.

It's most likely a lack of similar conversation interests that's driving down the score into fighting range. 10-points-Nice Atlantis Howe and her 1-point-Nice brother Gozer had a bit of shoulder-poking occur after Gozer became a kid due to a few failed conversations and a rejected attempt at playing (but are best friends now!). Some siblings start out with low scores -- which is a sort of built-in sibling rivalry -- but not all sims act on those low scores. For example, despite having a low initial STR/LTR with his toddler brother Garm, then child-aged 0-points-Nice Grendel Beaker talked to Garm instead of teasing him like 1-point-Nice nerd bully Aldous Gieke teased his twin siblings, or how Grendel's cousin -- and 1-point-Nice sim -- Sid Subject teased her little siblings. The teasing never led to bad feelings once the younger siblings became kids, though, and Aldous gets along well with the twins and Sid gets along with her younger sibs, especially her little minion sister Pearl.

And, for what it's worth, the most ill-tempered sim in all of my Strangetown is 10-points-Nice Howitzer Grunt. Dear lord. I've never seen any sim -- Nice or Grouchy -- go from zero to fighting quite as fast as he does. His only friend as a kid was his 6-points-Nice now-girlfriend Grimuara Subject; no other kid wanted anything to do with him. Considering everything, it sort of makes sense that he's so quick to swing, but it doesn't help endear him to others.

(...I've got a lot of Grouchy sims. And most of those Grouchy sims are dating/married/or best-friends-with Nice sims. All the relationships and friendships have generated on their own.)

I once did the Broken challenge over, only with the Brady family. Because there was very little furniture, the only thing for the kids to do was to interact with one of their five siblings or their parents. It mostly ensued a lot of games and dancing on feet, but Jan (then a child) would ALWAYS tease Cindy (then a toddler) and I could never figure out why. As they grew up, they still fought, and now that Cindy is close to joining the same college dorm as Jan, I'm wondering if it will continue. Ah well, at least the six kids Carol had in game get on well!

Also (it was in Stonebridge, so it was a while ago), I had a set of triplets where two of them hated each other for some unknown reasons, but their relationships with the third were perfectly nice. Weird.

I've never had that problem before, or any of the issues mentioned; the children in my game don't always get along with their siblings, but they don't fight. It's possible that they're suffering aspiration failure; kids in aspie failure tend to act out.

Ya know wat da say, der ain't a bad twin just a bad player. mmmMmmm

Someone aged up in red aspiration? I've seen kids attack siblings they were previously best friends with after aging up in red aspiration. (That darned throw party fear that they roll up after the party's been called for but before it starts. Or Asylum kids.)
Do you use the activity table? Children and toddlers build relationships over that. Also the doll house.
You can fix the kids and teens' relationships slowly by making them all fish together. Or stick them in a tent and tell them to chat. If they have no interests in common, well, that's what magazines are for.

Every so often I have a pair of siblings who do not get along well and end up fighting. Personally, I don't see this as a problem. SImply a realistic, interesting part of the game. Sometimes they mend things on thier own - often after they become adults or teens. Other times I help by directing them to get to know one another better and to share activities.

The Pleasant twins of Pleasantville, well, they are a special case! It appears that they have been allowed to bicker and compete for such a long time before the player arrives on the scene that they have basically become BEFL ..my own shorthand for Best Enemies For Life. So, best of luck with them!!

I make babies controllable to check on their needs and I've need older siblings have negative relationships with the newborn sibling and the baby sibling have a negative relationship with the older sibling(s). If the negative relationship is not improved by the time they become children and they have negative interactions with each other as children then there is potential for it to get to the point of fighting. You need to make efforts (Peni listed good ways above) to improve the relationships between the siblings if you don't want them to fight.

Funny. All my siblings tend to be BFFs by the time they're mid-child stage, at the latest, and I don't really do anything to make them that way. That said, my toddlers free will 100% of the time that they are awake. When siblings are toddlers together, mine seem to "huggle" a lot, regardless of their relationship, and that gives them a good bump every time they do it. So they're often best friends before they're out of diapers. Children in my game free will about 50% of the time that they're not in school, more than that on weekends when they don't have school. So all the relationships between siblings in my game form more or less on their own and at least with the way I play, they seem to choose positive interactions way more often than negative ones. I have children who will tease their toddler siblings, but it doesn't happen often enough that they really build a strongly negative relationship.

That said, I've only ever had a pixel age up badly when a relative has died very close to the time that they were set to grow up and they had a fear of a relative dying. But in the main, since the way I play is to play according to pixels' wants, my pixels tend to be happy campers. So for whatever reason, Heimlich, you have unhappy campers. Frankly, I'd like to have a few more of those, myself, so I've been contemplating changing the way I play a bit.

I'd say just let it take its course. Siblings fight. perhaps your sim parent could even "ground" them until they become friendly. Or maybe have them drift apart as they grow up, only to be reunited by a family event. A parent death tragedy? A new niece or nephew? Just make it pert of the story. Or you can use mods such as the sim Blender to make them play nice. Up to you.

IRL, not all "sibling fights" are necessarily a sign of poor relationship. Brothers like to wrestle or paper-sword-fight with each other. They're just being boys. In fact, I don't remember where but I've read that having kids "shoot each other with finger guns" and playing "violent games" actually reduces their chance of using real guns and using real force on real people to cause real damage. Letting them shoot their friends with imaginary bullets is a way for them to get it out of their system. I find that very fascinating.

^ Hey, it's not just brothers who like to do that! My brother and I wrestled and played "cops and robbers" and had sword fights and all that stuff. And I'm a girl. And I usually won the wrestling because I've always been bigger and stronger than him. Although not lately. Good thing he lives in the Midwest and I'm currently on the West Coast or else he might challenge me to a wrestling match and I might *gasp!* lose.

But yes, I agree that aggressive play amongst siblings is normal and good. It just doesn't have to be between boys, is all.

Sometimes the kids just don't click with each other. I had a pair of half sisters who hated each other and, as far as I could tell, it was all brought on because one of them wanted to hug and play tag and the other one kept refusing. Every refusal chipped away at the relationship score, until one day they were rolling around the room in a dust cloud. The kids didn't live together so their relationship score was already on the low end, to begin with.

It doesn't even have to be a mutual negative relationship between siblings, I think. In my game one child often has a considerably higher relationship score for a sibling than that sibling for him/her. That can easily result in autonomous play interactions which then get rejected. Once that has happened, a poke fest is likely to ensue.

Yeah, I had siblings get into some sort of rivalry. I guess jealousy is one factor.

Some of my sims kids would eventually grow out of it, but others don't.

For example, two of the Vijayakar daughters used to fight each other when they were kids, but by the time they reached teenhood, they got over it. On the other hand, we have the LeTourneau's, and the 2nd daughter is getting into fights with both younger and older sister. Their only brother is on good means with everyone, so he has nothing to worry about.

Does talking to a baby bump actually cause the person to have a higher relationship with the kid once it's born?

It's hard to quantify, but I think so. I could be wrong.

According to my own experiences, yes. Therefore, I always do.

I did not know that! Getting my kids to talk to unborn babies right now!...