Imaginary Friend Glitch Help?

[LivvieLove]

I've seen a few of these threads but they were all decently old and I didn't want to drag an old topic back up. I thought about putting this in the imaginary friend thread but I'm not sure if it fits well enough there.

I guess my issue is that I haven't had a single working imaginary friend doll (in all of my games) in months. The last time I actually had one work was well over 5-6 months ago and ever since I haven't had any luck with them. My sims will give birth and receive the doll and I'll get excited and name it and the kids won't put it down. I'll get the message that "[toddler] is starting to get very attached to [imaginary friend doll name]" or the message along those lines.

I'll get glitches where sometimes the doll won't even have the right options on it as a toddler, where the only option is to "Play with" and there is no "Sing to" or "Change Doll Name" option. That doesn't happen every time though. So assuming I make it around the toddler stage with an Imaginary friend doll that works, I get to the child stage and put the doll on the ground and... nothing. I never get a notification for "____ wants to come out and play!" or anything, so I figured the dolls relationship with my toddler/now child sim wasn't high enough (even though they played with the thing non-stop as a toddler/child). To test out my theory, I had my child play with the doll for 2 days straight with Testing Cheats enabled to watch his motives and all he did was play, sing and host tea parties with this toy! Still absolutely nothing. No messages, nothing.
When I played with mods in, I just assumed it was the mods. Though recently I've been taking out my mods and playing without them and the glitches are still going on (even in new files). I've tried resetting the Imaginary Friend doll by name. I've tried manually aging my child Sim down to toddler to have the IF doll out of the inventory when they age from toddler to child and then hitting the "trigger age transaction" via TestingCheats. I'm not really sure what else I can try anymore! I've tried the "Host a Tea Party" thing which everyone swears wakes their imaginary friend up on every site I've checked! I just want to have an imaginary friend doll work for once!
Does anyone have any ideas that I might be able to try to have a working imaginary friend doll?

[Nutella]

I believe the relationship must be build in toddler stage.  You need to play with the doll in toddler stage until you see 2 notifications.  The 1st notification is your child is getting very attached to doll.  The 2nd notification will say "doll name" has become a very special toy for "your toddler name". Who knows what will happen if he/she keeps playing with it? Maybe they'll stay as good friends when he/she grows up!

If you age up your toddler before you see the 2nd notification, the doll will not work. 

[LivvieLove]

The notification I always got was that one for my toddler, but I only got one. It was always the special toy, will be best friends when they're older message. At least that's what I got this last time around when I tested it. I've found Debug Enabler from Nraas can force them to age up but maybe I'm just missing that second message. I wonder why it has to be done at the toddler stage? It still showed them having ++ Friendship signs when they were children and he played with the doll.

[Nutella]

Try one game with your toddler playing the doll until he/she get the 2nd message.  The 1st message is less than 12 sim hours, the 2nd message is around 24 sim hours.  Sim hours = toddler time spend playing with doll.  Let me know if it works.