Partly because I haven't decided what to do yet, and partly because I'm curious, here's a question for you: When your Sims grow from child to teenager, how do you choose their aspirations? Is it randomized? Do you have a system? Is it just whatever you feel like?

I can't quite remember what I did in the past, especially since only one of my hoods got to the second generation before dying. So I don't have anything to say for now.

For nearly all of them I choose romance or popularity. They only get any of the others if they have really a obvious bent for it - like a really swotty kid will get knowledge straight off. My reasoning for this is: hormones. People of that age are goverened by their hormones - it's all about your friends, your social standing and discovering love and sex. As they get older, personalities become clearer as they do in real life. They get reviewed at growing up to adult. With those sims that go to college, that is relatively straight-forward because you get the opportunity to do it during their college years. With non-college sims, if I want to change them, I'll use a potion or just use SimPE.

Interesting question!

I came up with a simple system based on their OTH (one true hobby; if you look under the enthusiasm tab, you'll see one that's highlighted, and that's their OTH. They'll normally notify you what their OTH is with a pop up.)

So, it's important that I allow them to figure it out before they hit teen. The system goes as follows:

Nature -> Family
Cuisine -> Primary Grilled Cheese with Secondary Family (though I'm considering switching this up because the Grilled Cheese aspiration is a really dominant aspiration, so you'll never see any wants from the secondary aspiration popping up in the wants panel. So instead, it would be Primary Family with Secondary Grilled Cheese.)
Tinkering -> Knowledge
Science -> Knowledge
Games -> Pleasure
Music & Dance -> Pleasure
Sports -> Popularity
Fitness -> Fortune
Film and Lit. -> Romance
Art & Crafts -> Romance

It's not a perfect system, but it certainly does make things easier (and sensible).

I've usually done whatever I feel like for that particular Sim, though I have randomized it on occasions. Sometimes a child Sim will just scream a certain aspiration but then other times it's like so I might randomize it in that case with a dice roll

In my game around 8 adopted kids have grown up or is on the verge of growing up.

Some of them are easier than others - as wickedjr89 says - there are those that scream for a certain aspiration.
It is hard for me to give them anything other than knowledge (my instinct says: don't do that to the poor kid)! - but I do try to look at their personalities and what they have been doing up until the birthday.

So Kendall got popularity, since she has 9 friends already and loves phoning other people.

Will got pleasure because he jumps on everyone's furniture - beds, sofas, whenever and wherever he can, and also plays with every fridge door in sight.

Alec (thank you) got knowledge because he loves the telescope, chess, music, gardening, exercise and cleans up after everyone else, including picking up his younger sister's toys.He has more skills than his peers.

Since Sally has not done much to direct me, except for being exceptionally cute, she gets knowledge as well.

I usually based it off of their personalities and interests, although I would often change it or add a secondary aspiration as my sims explore themselves more as they grow older.

I try to go with what feels 'right' for the sim. This is usually influenced by their childhood wants and how they generally behave. I'll also take a peek at their personality, though that doesn't always take precedent. If I feel a shy sim is never-the-less more suited to Popularity than anything else, that's what they'll get. If I don't get a strong impression one way or the other, I'll pick randomly based on what others in the family already have. I really do have to be careful because I'm far too prone to giving sims Knowledge.

If the child exhibited a tendency to frequently roll specific skill wants, such as "gain level x in so-and-so skill", I usually start them out as "Knowledge" sims, because that guarantees them a high chance to get into college, and later to get a good job to their liking.
If the child is mostly into making friends and socializing, it may depend on their personality whether I make them Family, Popularity, or Romance sims. It may also depend a little on my mood, there.
If the child started out rolling wants to earn money or to buy stuff early, then they may be budding Fortune sims.

I never consider this the final selection, though. If a college student makes it through Sophomore year, they do get a free choice to change their Aspiration, which I *do* occasionally use.
And even without the free change option, they could always buy the Aspiration award "Re-Nu-Yu Senso Orb", with which to change their aspiration.

And finally, sometimes it's fun to shake things up a little For example, a person who has a Knowledge personality, but rolls mostly Family wants, could suddenly end up being on the path to Romance or Popularity. It's fun to do something unexpected occasionally.

I always randomise and immediately randomise a secondary aspiration as well. I never really feel like I know a sim enough to choose a certain aspiration for them, so I feel like I get to know them more when I randomise it and see what wants they roll and how they fare on with it. It also adds a balance to the game. I always used to choose family, but nowadays I think I have more romance/fortune/pleasure than anything else which is fun.

I don't view upon Aspirations as something that the sim consciously chooses, and most certainly, as you say, not yet at that age at any rate. Because indeed, before they're halfway through college, how are they to have any idea what they will really be? How many people really end up doing what they dreamed to be as a toddler or child? And how many of those dreams are actual *Aspirations* and not just *vocations*??

But If you look upon Aspiration as something that they are more likely to succeed at, something that they're wired to be striving for, maybe something that they're genetically made up to do, or are even *destined* to do with their lives... Whatever way works for you, however you may wish to name it... Then suddenly, an Aspiration can be selected at that age. And it can still be changed later, anyway. So it's not the end of the world if the initial selection was wrong, either.

Anyway, a totally random way of assigning aspirations must at least make for an *interesting* game, with lots of surprises.

They've usually let me know by that time. Story and character considerations trump everything else, including my own preference. The Hart children of the GS Uberhood Challenge overwhelmingly have had obvious aspirations on that basis. Silver, the oldest and his father's near-clone, had to be Romance like his dad. Trent, the second child, was rebellious and sulky and old enough to make vows when the babymama (not his own!) that he bonded with vanished - he swore to find out what happened to her and became Knowledge, with the LTW manipulated to be Become Head of SCIA. I wanted to make Beatrice, the most recent to turn teen, a Fortune sim, since the family suffered financial setbacks shortly before her birthday and he didn't have one in that aspiration yet, but in the days leading up to the birthday she went around family-kissing everyone (even relatives she barely knew), playing with her little sister, and paying extra attention to the family pets, to make sure I gave her the correct Family aspiration. The oldest child of a large, poor family is likely to be Family or Fortune to reflect the degree of responsibility that position holds; but when two-social points Guadalupe Newson grew up to child at the very same moment that her mother gave birth to the first of her younger siblings, she immediately set out to convince me to make her Popularity. Every want she rolled and every autonomous action she made was about getting attention - her first act as a child was to march up to a previously unmet family member and propose a game, her first act on a community lot was to head for a karaoke machine she was afraid to sing on, and she kept bringing other kids home or coming home with them. So Popularity she is.

If neither the sims nor the story conditions are making things obvious, I have dice. Lots of them. Randomizing with a six sided die is the obvious thing to do, but it's not often that any given teen is equally likely to be any one of the six aspirations, so I generally only do that when I'm growing up townies with them. More often there's a weighted chance. Any given teen should be more likely to roll one of the "immature" aspirations - Romance, Popularity, Pleasure - than one of the "Mature" aspirations - Family, Fortune, Knowledge. So a child who brought someone home from school every day and rolled wants for activities and friends but not for skill points, family members, or homework is clearly not going to be Family or Knowledge, but may be any of the others. So I may assign the probabilities Pleasure 1-2, Fortune 3, Popularity 4-6, Romance 7-8 and roll an 8-sided die. Sometimes one will narrow the choices all the way down to two, which is a coin flip - unless the two happen to be an Immature and a Mature aspiration, in which case I weight the odds in favor of the Immature one - 1-4 Pleasure, 5-6 Knowledge on a six-sider, or 1-3 Romance, 4 Family on a 4-sider. Certain families have themes. A Hawkins is overwhelmingly more likely to be Family than any other aspiration, and a Tricou is much more likely to get Pleasure.

Since I send almost everyone to University, I don't feel a lot of pressure to choose the right aspiration at teendom - I can always change them at Junior year. Usually I'll change from an Immature aspiration to a Mature one, but not always. The obvious progressions are Pleasure to Knowledge, Popularity to Fortune, and Romance to Family, if the change is happening because the original aspiration just is not working; but sometimes sims give me clear signals that they were simply assigned the wrong aspiration, in which case I change it to the right one. And in the families that are more prone to certain aspirations than others, the decision will be weighted based on whether they are maturing into or out of their family culture - i.e., whether they're rebelling or accepting it. And some sims may even change from one Immature to another, or one Mature to another, depending on how their character arcs have progressed.

Sims who change in Junior year always get the original aspiration as their secondary; and sometimes I assign a secondary instead of changing the primary aspiration at that time.In a member of a family with a strong theme, the family aspiration will almost certainly be chosen for a secondary if the original deviant aspiration is not changed, so a Hawkins who was a teen Fortune sim may change to Family/Fortune, or merely add Family as a secondary to Fortune. A heterosexual Romance sim who has spent her college years rolling as many wants to befriend her own sex as to pursue the target sex may either add a Popularity secondary, or change to Popularity/Romance. (Or discover she's bi...)

Very few sims get secondary aspirations before Junior year. When they do, it's usually because they were a coin flip choice, and the secondary is the aspiration that the dice didn't choose. (Thus do we have our cake and eat it.) But sometimes situational factors call for a certain secondary. The younger boys Rhett Hart raises in the GS Uberhood have all grown up with a normal that included a polyamorous dad and a father, big brother, and grandfather who are all dedicated Romance sims, so they picked up dating skills by osmosis. They all have Romance as a secondary, and furthermore were allowed to get all the available perks for that aspiration and run dates with the the date's wants panel open while they were teens instead of accumulating them gradually as they learned from experience.

Character, wants the sim's rolled, autonomous actions, relationships with older sims and their aspirations. If it's obvious that little Joe Sim wants to be just like Grandpa Sim, even though his personality is totally different, then he may take the same aspiration anyway. They may change them in college, or if they have a nervous breakdown, that's an appropriate time to reassess goals in life and change their path.

One thing I do is assign secondary aspirations as soon as they become available by points, which any born in game kid has by their teen birthday. This gives them more rounded personalities right from the beginning, and if it's a teen who I know is going in a particular life path, I'll try to give a secondary that indicates what their primary aspiration will be post-college-change. So if Suzie's pleasure/family as a teen, that's a very strong indication that she'll be family/? probably pleasure as an adult.

I tend to pause the game as they aging up and look at their new interest panel - there's a small amount of time between game changing their interests a bit and the aspiration selection window opening up. For some sims, the interests shift to something that suggests a fitting aspiration (for example, a high interest in money, work and crime will weight the decision towards fortune and if they have no interest in money I'll eliminate fortune as a possibility). I also consider their personality and hobby, and any wishes that they kept rolling as children - sims that kept wanting new family members to to talk to relatives will be more likely to become family sims. Their family and backstory plays a role, too. After looking at all these things, I've normally eliminated a couple of options completely and am leaning towards one or two others and at that point I'll roll dice. Sometimes it's an equal chance for all aspirations that weren't eliminated, and sometimes I weight things in favour of one or two of them, and sometimes it's a choice between just two so I'll pick one and make the other the secondary aspiration before the LTW has been determined.

I usually just roll a die, unless I can find an obvious fit - I had this child sim who would constantly walk past neighbors' houses and befriend everybody, so she became a popularity sim.

If the child has a lot of friends I make them popularity sims, but like maxon said, there is a point in college to elect to change their aspiration and sometimes I switch it up. I usually do what wickedjr does and just assign an aspiration based on my perception of the sim in question.

I usually base it on the Sim's personality. A Sim who is very Serious and Neat is an ideal candidate for the Knowledge aspiration; Neat and Nice is Family; Outgoing and Nice is Popularity; Outgoing and Grouchy is Romance (because a Nice Sim wouldn't keep cheating on people!); Active and Outgoing is Fortune; Lazy and Grouchy is Pleasure. Of course, not all Sims have a clear aspiration based on this method, in which case I'll try to find the best fit based on previous Wants and hobby interests, or assign a secondary aspiration immediately.

If I forget to check and don't have a clear idea of what the Sim should be, I assign Knowledge and review it in their fourth semester of college; if I really can't fit the Sim into any particular category, I assign Fortune because it's easy to play.

If a Sim doesn't already have a secondary aspiration when they age up to Elder, I automatically assign Knowledge (unless that's their primary, in which case I assign Fortune). Most of my Sims spend their retirement years happily pottering about, gaining skills and Talent badges or teaching younger family members.

I used to choose based on what I just "felt" the sim would be like from their autonomous actions, (really liked playing with their siblings they'd be family, or if they had lots of friends they'd be a popularity for example) but these days I just use Phaenoh's random aspect generator for the teens transition to randomise it.

Most of the time, I use Notovny's Randomizer ( www.notovny.com/programs.html ) . What I do is uncheck "Your Choice," then roll until the sim's own zodiac sign appears. Whatever aspiration rolls up with it is what the sim's aspiration will be. It feels more random because sometimes I have to click the button many times before the sim's zodiac appears. I dislike the Family aspiration so if there are too many existing Family sims, I will throw it out and reroll. Otherwise, I let the roll stand.

I base them on personality, hobbies and some interests.
Of course most of them want to be popular-that's what being a teen is into..and while I do appreciate that they want to be this, their lives are not always going to be about being friends with everyone in their known universe.
If they're into school a lot they'll usually be a knowledge aspiration, and if they like money (and work) they'll be assigned a fortune aspiration. I would not put them on the romance aspiration until they become older, because while love seems to be a great thing, their future lies with what they can do before they grow up.
Also, they'll roll some LTW that really indicates what they want to do and that's half the battle there-but I never assign a secondary aspiration until they really do grow up.

I have my five year old roll a d6 twice (once for primary, once for secondary)...

Randomised - but I have three methods.

One method weights each primary-secondary combo (including primary with no secondary) with the more common seeming aspirations being higher weighted than unusual seeming ones. I have three different scales, for teens, adults, and academic adults (good grades at university). The teen category has higher rating on things like popularity, pleasure and romance, and the academic adult one has higher ratings on things like knowledge. I forget exactly what the weightings are but that works. I roll to see if they should change aspiration when they reach 2nd year of university or after any significant, "this makes me rethink my priorities" life event, like perhaps a divorce or the death of a close friend. Sometimes with this method I'll pick what immediately comes up, but sometimes I feel very strongly that the rolled aspiration combination doesn't fit the sim at all, so I reroll.

The second method is entirely random. I look at the current time and take the minutes of the hour. The first digit (0-6) picks their primary aspiration. I start with the topmost as number 1 and count around clockwise, with 0 being 6. The second digit (0-9) picks their secondary, starting from the aspiration they have as primary, counting around, 1-6 times. 7, 8, 9 or 0 means they don't get a secondary.

Third is slightly less random, I keep an eye on them and what I feel their personality is and I pick several primary options for them. Then when their birthday comes, I use some random method (the time, or a die) and pick one of the options I'd thought of. Then I wait, and choose their secondary later as I get an idea what seems to motivate them.

With all methods I check the LTW as soon as I can, and I reroll that if it doesn't fit the sim.

It's interesting that somebody above said that they don't feel family is a fitting aspiration for a teen because 13 year olds don't dream of having families, because 13 year old me most definitely dreamed of having a family! It hasn't been my only goal in life by a long shot, but it's always been very important to me. I find that TS2 Family teens are quite sweet and seem to want to concentrate on finding a steady boyfriend/girlfriend (rather than kissing as many boys/girls as they can find...) and concentrating on their studies and part time job, which I assume is in order to support their *future* family. And they often tend to like playing with their younger siblings, if they have them, and keep in touch with their parents rather than rebelling so much. So I like family teens. I use all of the aspirations for teens really, I just interpret them in less-mature ways. An adult fortune sim will want to work for that promotion, the long game, whereas a teen fortune sim just wants to get rich quick, and likes to take on odd jobs.

For me an aspiration is what motivates the sim most/what they value the most, so it's an innate kind of thing.

I try to interpret it based on their upbringing. I look at the aspiration of their parents, negative events and how they could react to it (for example, an orphan might strive for a family). I also play premade families, so when choosing aspirations for pre-made sims, in this megahood I actually decided to follow the 'hints', and read up on their wiki page. Almost all premade children/toddlers have "hints" towards the future aspiration maxis wanted for them. Sometimes if that isn't the same as what I thought they should be, I give them the hinted at aspiration - but with a secondary aspiration.

Every once in a while, I'm completely stuck. So I usually narrow it down. Usually I end up narrowing it down to 2 aspirations, and decide to make one a primary and one a secondary. I do try to read up on their interests, hobbies, etc though when I'm really stuck. Although hobbies don't tend to help too much - I can imagine a nature loving free love hippy, and also a farmer tending their garden to churn out a profit. So most of the time I base it more on interests, and family, and experiences.

Funny how I just did this a few minutes ago with Sadao Yamamoto who just became a teen!

Sadao Yamamoto:
OTH - Science, but loves Tinkering
Major personality points: He's very neat, and very nice. He's also rather on the shy/serious side.
Highest interests: Entertainment and Sci-Fi
CONGRATS Sadao: Knowledge Sim

I have a working system for aspirations that I combined together after brutally ripping apart pieces from other people. I like having a specific way to chose aspirations after I made a cripplingly shy sim a popularity sim. It's mostly personality with a shot of high interest and OTH.

Fortune: Serious/Outgoing/Active
Knowledge: Neat/Serious/Shy
Family: Nice/Active
Popularity: Outgoing/Playful
Pleasure: Playful/Lazy
Romance: Outgoing/Playful/Nice

I don't know what to do with grilled cheese yet. Maybe get together that Grilled Cheese Cult. Wonder if I can find a grilled cheese statue?

usually Aspiration is based on personality.
Neat: Family
Outgoing: Popularity
Active+Serious: Knowledge
Playful: Fortune
Outgoing+Playful: Romance