Really i just have to vent. I have 3 adult sims and 2 toddlers. Played for about 3 hours today most of which was spent trying to get the adults to leave the toddlers alone. The first one puts the baby in the crib, the next one takes it out and puts it on the floor then the next one puts it back in the crib. Rinse and repeat and all the time the babies motives just keep going into the red because they just pick them up and put them down without ever taking care of their other needs. While i'm at it what's with always laying the baby on the kitchen floor? I even moved a crib into the kitchen so they had a place to lay it. Nope still put it on the floor. Doesn't matter if they are knee deep in dirty diapers and rotten bottles that baby has to be put on the kitchen floor. Thanks for listening just needed to vent cause screaming at the screen (leave that baby alone) wasn't doing it.

What you need is Pescado's no baby harrasment mod. It helps a lot.

That's interesting; I have Double Deluxe (which from what I read here has an updated engine but not as 'updated' as Ultimate Collection) and I haven't had that problem (not even after installing Apartment Life). Every so often an adult or teen will stop what they're doing (even if it's going to work/school) and autonomously try to feed a baby even if it's not hungry and crying for attention and/or a diaper change, but that's easily canceled.

I think there's a mod that fixes this, I'll post it here once I find it. In the meantime, you can try No Baby Harassment, mentioned above, or use TwoJeff's No Baby/Toddler Swarming, which should stop Sims from pestering the poor baby till both parent and child drop from exhaustion.

Thank you guys. I didn't know about those mods. I will get one of them before i play again as I was about to pull my hair out.

I think it also helps if you have sims doing other things. I haven't really had this problem since I first started playing, and I think it's because I micro-manage my sims a lot and make sure my sims are always doing something (e.g. reading, eating, taking a bath). If anything my sims sometimes have a habit of neglecting their babies...

You don't need "no baby harassment," though if it suits your playstyle better than what I'm about to explain to you, go for it. A lot of people use and like it; I don't use it and wouldn't like it because it keeps non-household members from interacting with the baby, and I love it when Gramma or Auntie or the teen sister's BFF help out with the baby.

First thing, as with all sim problems, is that you need to understand what's happening here. The toddlers have critically low energy. This is signalling to all the adults at the same time "toddler needs to be put in crib." You have two cribs. So Adult 1 is responding to the call, putting toddler 1 in Crib 1. But then Adult 2 also responds to the call, and there's an empty crib, so Adult 2 wakes baby up and puts him in crib 2. Meanwhile Adult 3 is responding; and Adult 1 is now responding to Toddler 2, whose needs have also gotten critical.

So, how do you deal with this? Any number of ways, depending on your playstyle and the individual circumstances.

One approach is to only have one crib. "But - there are two toddlers!" This is true. However, toddlers can put themselves to bed in pet beds and on custom toddler blankets and toddler beds. Toddlers will tend to autonomously use these, if available and if not interfered with, long before their energy is critical.

Another approach is to monitor the toddlers' needs and tell sims to put them into their respective cribs when the energy is still yellow, or at worst the high stages of orange. If other needs are also getting low, prioritize them - food, potty, bed! Just like you would for a real toddler. With twins especially this can be difficult, but it's simple resource management and it doesn't take long to get the hang of it. Twins are certainly a challenge in this regard, but it's far from impossible.

If the needs do get critical (some days are just that way!), the moment you realize it, PAUSE THE GAME. Seriously, it's mindboggling how many people forget that they can do this. Tell Sim A to put Toddler 1 in this crib, Sim B to put Toddler 2 in that crib, cancel the "pick toddler up" action waiting in everybody else's queue, and then give everybody controllable on the lot something to do besides play musical cribs. If you have visitors, you can choose options that will occupy them, too, so Granny doesn't decide what that sleepy toddler really needs is a bath. This includes Sim A and Sim B - they must have something in their queue after "put toddler in crib" that will short circuit the "put other toddler in bed" action.

These actions have to last long enough for the toddlers to get their energy to a point where they're not advertising, so make it something you know will last a good long time - a chess game, chatting with someone compatible, weeding the garden, even aimlessly going to the farthest place on the lot from the cribs - and you'll be fine.

Another approach is to keep your sims on a schedule. That would drive me wiggy, personally, but a lot of people do it, enjoy it, and swear by it. You can get hacks to make it easier, like Toddlers Sleep Through the Night.

Remember, it's not the sims' fault. They're obeying their code, and rely on you to be smart enough to notice and deal when their code steers them wrong. After all, if they were smart, what would they need us for? (Though I often find them pretty smart when I free-range them.)

"No baby harassment" stopped too many of the actions, I liked, but the musical cribs game is still annoying.

Inge's "already in crib fix" does solve this problem without stopping any other baby interactions, though. It's the "crib fix" found here: http://www.simlogical.com/sl/Sims2P...2_Childcare.htm

It's actually just a missing update for newer or custom cribs. So the code was originally intended to work much better and they just messed up the later added cribs.

Yes! That was the mod I was looking for!

I don't use any kind of no baby harassment/swarming mod. It's all to do with coding and management as peni said. I use a toddler blanket or bed and have the toddler put itself to bed. Now will an adult try and wake them up from a toddler blanket? Yes, if that toddler was allowed to get very red in the energy they will and it's very annoying. They want to place the toddler in a crib, but once they are holding the toddler they find there is no crib and place him back down on the floor. Have the toddler go to bed before he is that tired and if he is that tired make sure those adults are occupied so the coding doesn't kick in. Send them to play the piano, paint a picture, line up a number of things to do. So number one get a toddler blanket or bed, couldn't recommend those more. Pet beds while okay in a pinch offer very low energy and a toddler has to sleep a long time to raise the energy bar, but before the bar is full they will need to potty or eat. So pet beds are not very efficient. I like to have toddlers all trained and skilling charisma or mechanical not just sleeping, eating and peeing all the time.

With the baby on the kitchen floor they have probably taken the baby to the kitchen to get a bottle, the solution is to move the fridge near to the crib. They may still place the baby on the floor, but if it's in a bedroom it is probably a carpeted floor.

All very good advice and thank you all for your help. I will be trying some of these. I'm afraid the game simply got away from me. I never intended for her to have more than 1 baby at a time, but i'm using acr and my sims were going at it like rabbits and she got pregnant 3 times very quickly. Once the same day she had a baby I think. That's when I remembered you could put them on birth control. I hate to think how many babies she would have if I hadn't remembered that. And yes i'm one of those people who tend to forget you can pause the game.

Pause is your friend. :D

Yep download that mod as in all our games the sims tend to swamp babies, on the other hand if they don't swamp them they tend to then forget about baby all together lol mine forget they have a baby most of the time lol.

Same thing happens with the servo involving the high chair. I sat and watched as the servo picked up the baby, put it in the high chair, then take it out and put it on the floor, then pick it p and put it in the high chair, take it out, put it back in. Just stuck on an infinite loop. The problem was the toddler was equally hungry and tired, but only halfway for both, so I finalky had to put an end to that nonsense, and have her get a bottle.

After that, she was back in her right head and put the kid to sleep.

As for the baby always being put on the flor, this is because the baby's energy is too high for the crib. Sims see crib as a bed and bedtime is only for sleepies. I don't mind that they put the toddlers on the floor, but I get squicked at the idea of the half naked baby against cold wood or linoleum, or scratchy carpet. I wish that there was a blanket in the game they could be put on instead. We always put babies on blankets, surrounded by pillows and stuffed animals, and baby toys. I know there's a toddler blanket available here, but I would love something like that for babies with little pillows around it as well.

There is a baby version of the toddler blanket.

Babies can be placed on the toddler mat as well. Then there is also the dangle master they can both play and sleep in there or just move the baby onto a rug. Babies don't have to be half naked either, lots of nice clothes around now.

How do people forget to pause the game? My finger hovers over that P and/or 0 button! Maybe I'm more of a control freak than I think!

However pause doesn't help with one of the behaviours when it's unmodded. I can't remember which mod prevents this but it's something that interrupts. So you can set one person to hold the toddler and cancel all of the others, but while the other actions are cancelling, the one who is supposed to be holding is reciving the message that the baby is "in use" and cancels their own interaction, and then in a split second somebody else tries to hold them. I suppose you could direct everyone else to do other things, but it's annoying to have to do this every time, and sometimes the "help baby" urge is so strong it cancels out something you've told them to do.

Both off topic and on topic. Sims really are stupid.

I left my sim alone to see how long it took her to cook a meal when she was hungry. She got into orange hunger, whined about being hungry and went to play on the computer. She went to the loo, whined about being hungry and went to play with the dog. By this time I thought she might starve to death, but she finally got a stuff face action (which minimally increases hunger and doesn't really solve the problem). She went around doing other stuff, got into red hunger again, whined about it and went to take a bubble bath. Then she whined about it again and went to bed. By the time she woke up she was seriously starving, so she had a single can of juice and whined about her hunger again. At this point I made her check the fridge in case it had run out of food and I hadn't noticed, but there was plenty in there. There were also leftovers in there. She went on like this for two days, just barely keeping herself alive with stuff face and juice.

Once, only once, she got a make cereal action in her queue and I cheered, but then she tripped over the dog, forgot about it, whined about her hunger and went to play on the computer again. DX I was sure she was going to die and make me quit without saving, but then her off days ended and she went back to work and got fed there (if she hadn't she would have died when she got home, as the hunger had gone totally red).

Sims really are stupid. Also, apparently having a job can save your life lol.

I always Pause my game frequently, and that's how I catch 90% of my Sims doing unwanted actions. That's how I caught my Sim trying to play the guitar when his carpool was about to leave! His Job Performance meter was well in the red, and he was a Fortune Sim... not to mention he had a Fear of missing the carpool. Talk about Sims literally being stupid there...

But Pause has more functions than just buying me time to cancel my Sim's actions. When I need to use a tool like the InSIMenator or Sim Manipulator, or if I need to flip through pie menus to look for the interaction I want in allmenus, or especially when I need to force an error and reset an object, I always pause. That way, it prevents Sims from trying to do something stupid while I handle this fragile thing that supports their world.... Hey, how dare you start cooking while I was trying to spawn a Servo to cook for you.... oh good Lord, you started a fire! Ooh... I will make you pay for that! *Force error on Sim* *delete*. No Servo for you, not even when you get back!

Lol Charity, some sims are smarter about eating than others I've noticed. Playing a challenge where you have one or more uncontrollable you start to see who are continually trying to starve themselves. One uncontrolable always comes to eat when called and often has two helpings, the other doesn't come when household is called for a meal and is always complaining of being hunger. Maybe it's personality.

That's Sim anorexia. They're trying to keep their slim figures, even if they only have skin and bones left.

If all sims were created without idiosyncrasies there would be no fun playing the game. We decide to correct their actions or allow them to make poor choices that EA gave them.

I can't remember where this mod is from, thought it was Boiling Oil's but can't find it in his links. It's called 'live'. I'm pretty sure this helps sims put their needs in a more reasonable order to prevent disasters. Hopefully someone here is familiar with this mod and if I'm giving a correct description.

I'm not sure if you meant this one but Cyjon recently released a Self Preservation mod: http://www.cyjon.net/node/536 and the description is "Sims will be less stupid about taking care of needs, emphasizing hunger over bladder or energy"

Cannot help smiling at the stupid Sims @Peni Grifin about the babies totally, though. (Sims do get smarter with time, I believe)

That might be the one I was thinking of. Now I'll have to hunt down the one called live, or I'll go nuts trying to remember what that on does, lol.