Parenting Skill Levels, Punish/Praise and Groundings
The Parenting Skill helps you to get better at raising kids in The Sims 4
The Sims 4 Parenthood's new Parenting Skill attempts to simulate the experience of parenting children and teens, and all the little improvements a parent makes in their approach to raising their children. Gains are not instant, it takes time and work, but with effort your Sims' children can turn out to be solid adults with a strong foundation that will serve them a lifetime. Once your Sim is done raising their own young ones, they can in turn help with the grandchildren and lend that experience to the new generation. This guide covers the abilities you unlock when leveling the parenting skill and provides tips to help improve your play. I've also provided details on the special parenting abilities you'll receive at various points.
How to: Parenting Cheats Press Control + Shift + C then type testingcheats on and press enter. You can now set your skill level with stats.set_skill_level major_parenting x (fill in 1-10) - we also have a full listing of Skill Cheats and a master list of Cheats in The Sims 4
Character Values - Learn about the values, raising them, and good/bad traits for extremes
How it Works: Character Values and Parenthood
Parenting Skill has a strong tie-in with the Character Values System that comes with Parenthood. While it helps with solving kids' needs and allows you to direct children and teens in-game by telling them to take care of themselves, do their homework or chores, this is its main purpose.
You can yell at your kids, but they're unlikely to listen. Level the parenting skill to get better interactions and higher success rates with all parenthood-related socials.
When a child exhibits a behavior - good or bad - that ties in to the character values system, the parent can be used to interact with the kid. Selecting the 'Parenting' menu, you can select one of multiple ways to encourage that behavior. At first, your only options are to loose your cool and yell at them when they do bad. Later, you can have a stern talk or hug it out when a kid has done wrong. This can be used to offset negative behaviors and push them toward positive territory. See the linked Character Values guide for more information - the game features emotional control, conflict resolution, responsibility, empathy, and manners as values and all of them have positive and negative traits associated with them.
Parenting works very well with the game's autonomy system, because you can fully raise kids without controlling them. Make sure they do their homework every day, encourage them to level skills they've taken an interest in. Ground them if they get into a fight so they will learn to better handle conflicts.
Leveling the Parenting Skill
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While you won't gain parenting experience from simple conversations with your Sim's children, nearly every other activity - from a simple scolding, to helping with homework, to bathing toddlers and potty training them or working on a group project for school - will increase the parenting skill. You can also go the old fashioned route and read parenting books when your Sim's first born is due. If you need a quick boost to skill, you can go to the 'Web' category on a computer and select to read the parenting forums to get a steady stream of skill xp.
Parenting Skill Levels
Levels 0-1 - Encourage behavior (good or bad), and influence them to clean. Reprimand bad behaviors via 'ask not to do that' and 'yell at to stop'.
Level 2 - Influence kids to do homework becomes available, along with the 'firmly tell not to do' bad behavior, which is much better than yelling at them. This level further expands available options you get when a teaching moment pops up (chance cards).
Level 3 - Solve motive (bladder, hygiene, fun needs) interactions become available. Additionally, they can give parenting tips to other parents.
Level 4 - Time Outs become available as a punishment. You'll now be able to see how advice will impact a child's development, when selecting a teaching moment chance card.
Level 5 - Groundings become available as a punishment when children and teens misbehave. Discussing bad behavior and 'hugging it out' are also available as less-extreme options. More motive-solving abilities become available to the parent.
Level 6 - The Sim can now help other Sims feel better when parenthood gets tough. Parents this experienced can tell what is making the baby cry, to better take care of it.
Level 7 - Even better motive-solving interactions (higher success rates), certain influence to interactions become more likely to succeed.
Level 8 - A third option appears for all teaching moments, which is likely to be a better or more desirable option. Discipline socials become much easier to perform, in general, with higher success rates across the board.
Level 9 - Influence interactions will always work once you've achieved this level of parenting. The impacts of advice in all teaching moments are known as well (which stats the child will gain/lose based upon what advice you give them).
Level 10 - The Super Efficient Baby Care interaction can now be used to solve all of a baby's needs at once! Other times, the Sim may use the 'Full Parent' mode, which slows their own need decay so they can care for their kids. It may only kick in when you've got low needs and need to do several parenting interactions. It's one I'll come back to once I've got more information on the mechanics.
My Kid Won't Listen! Help with Influence Success Rates!
Tucking in kids gives some parenting skill, but also improves relationships. This and teaching toddlers to use the potty are good examples of actions you can do early on to improve your Sim's parenting in preparation for more difficult years.
Sims' moods matter when parenting, as does the relationship with their child. Being stressed and having your kid hate you will more than likely result in a negative outcome. The moods of both Sims involved are taken into account, but the parent will be ineffective when they're in a bad mood. Try to improve this, set the tone of the conversation to positive by using some friendly socials like brighten day to soften the blow.
Maintaining a positive relationship with your Sim's kids will help to improve the success rate when trying to tell them to do something, and to a large degree. (This is true in reality, as well). It is initially quite hard to raise toddlers, especially as a single parent, but becomes easier with some parenting experience. Your Sim will grow with their child. Do things with them, participate, teach them the basics like saying sorry, and you'll find that more and more of your attempts will succeed.
Teaching Moments
The parenting skill's benefits become ever more apparent when parenting chance cards appear, known as teaching moments. Teaching moments are pop-ups that appear randomly and let you choose a solution to a problem for the kid based upon the parenting skill and your judgment as a player. Good options won't appear if your Sim is not experienced at parenting. When the Sim is good at parenting, you can get solutions that are seemingly rational solutions, though few solutions seem to be perfect. You will often be required to sacrifice one type of character value to gain another. If you were trying to make a 'perfect' kid, you might pick those that might boost the values that you find more difficult to instill in the child. Later in parenting skill progression, the values these chance cards impact will be noted for you so that you can use them to enhance a strength or shore up a weakness.
Super Parent! - The Role Model Reward Trait
The Sims 4 Parenthood comes with a new Super Parent Aspiration that revolves around the Parenting skill and raising families. It's not very difficult, though it does require you to finish raising a child who receives 3 positive Character Value traits for the final stage. Everything else is a cakewalk that is doable in one child's lifetime. This makes all future parenting easy, and rewards you with the Role Model reward trait. This trait increases all positive gains for character value experience by 50%, making it much easier for future children to get reward traits. It does work for grandparents as well, it's an aura that will benefit any children nearby.
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I've been playing around with the Super Parent aspiration and Full Parent Mode is triggered after a certain number of interactions (didn't count how many it took for me) regardless of needs. You'll know when you get a sim into Full Parent mode by a small chiming-type noise and green stars around your sim.
After you have completed a few parenting actions in a row the Super parenting Mode just automatically happens. My sims get it after feeding, changing and then rocking their twin nooboos. Sometimes it is triggered by teaching a toddler a skill and then feeding them right after. The parent sim does need to have level 10 Parenting Skill though.
I've noticed that my sim parents do not go into Full Parent Mode since I gave them their second need-based reward trait. So long as they only had Never Weary, I could get them into it, but now that they have Forever Full, I can't. You would think, with five toddlers... Yes, I've had them spend full half days just doing parenting interactions (feed all five toddlers, bathe all five toddlers, etc.) and still no Full Parent Mode. I think need levels are part of the code to get there, and since two of my needs never go below a certain level, it's now impossible.
The easiest way I found to activate 'Super Parent Mode' for your aspiration wish is to have a sim child play with the doctor's set several times in a row, have your sim praise them, and keep them close by so when they put down the doctors set and pick it back up they can praise them. Its a really good way to raise the child's empathy as well. You could probably also do this with 'winding down to classical music' on sims of child age and older. I guess if you wanted to do this method for toddlers, you could have them hit a large stuffed animal repeatedly or walk around naked! Just make sure the parents are by to properly scold and/or praise behavior.
I don't have this pack yet, but I'm curious - can teens get a bit of a head-start on the parenting skill by helping take care of their younger siblings?
It doesn't appear so. A teen can read the parenting skill book but not gain the actual skill and interacting with younger siblings just increases one or more of the new Character Values. Parent with the skill also can not use the interaction 'Give parenting Tips' on a teen.
I have reached level 6 in the parenting skill but i'm confused as to how my Sim can see their babies needs? Is it only available during certain circumstances?
When the baby is crying there will be the option to 'Find Out What is Wrong'. Then the baby will show a thought bubble indicating their needs. i.e. bottle for being hungry etc
Buy the Family Bulletin Board and then click on it in live mode. A few different options appear, one being set a curfew. There are 3 global times you can set 7pm, 9pm or 11pm and that will apply to all the children and teens in the household.
Am I the only person seriously annoyed by the fact they seem to have Omitted "Time out" for toddlers? In the real world Time outs were freaking invented for TODDLERS. They upped the mischief factor for toddlers with the parenthood pack. So COMMON SENSE would mean the pack also allows us to apply an ACTUAL Punishment/discipline option to balance out these new bad behaviors. RIGHT??? THE PARENTING options added by the pack for toddlers do not do much more then the angry options of scold and yell at that were already their. I have my adult sim take them to a chair before giving them a talking to or discipline. HOWEVER it drives me nuts that they can NITE a sibling and NOT be giving a proper time out for that. The Adults can already place toddlers on chairs and things so why not allow them to do so in a "TIME OUT" version of that action applied specifically to toddlers. It makes NO SENSE when they added all the extra bad behaviors to NOT also add a PROPER toddler version of time out. Heck depending on what they did maybe watching from a "Time out" chair while their mom cleans up the mess THEY MADE or comforts the sibling THEY JUST BIT could trigger a boots in empathy.
Just in case you didn't know, when Adult Sims reach level 4 in the Parenting Skill, they do have the ability to give Time Outs but only to children and teens.
Yes I was expressing my annoyance and confusion over them Omitting "Time outs" for Toddlers which makes No Sense to me whatsoever. The toddlers are now MORE misbehaved with the parenting pack, "Time Outs" were INVENTED for toddlers. As a way for them to calm down, emotionally reset. I assumed Toddler Time Out would NOT be the same as I kid/teen time out. I imagined toddler Time Out would basically be an adult taking the toddler away from the Mess they just made or out of striking distance of the Sibling they JUST BIT. Taking them to a quiet corner and placing them on a chair before Kneeling down to eye level and THEN disciplining them. Or (Depending on their traits/attitude) saying they have to “stay in the chair until they calm down” Then once they do (If they do) The discipline the parent applies has a higher chance of working and bonus chance or upping communication, emotional control for the toddler. I NEVER IMAGINED they would purposely increase the Toddlers likelihood of behaving badly and NOT add a Toddler "Time Out"
Unfortunately we are just a fan site. You probably would be best to give this kind of feed back directly to the developers through the Official Forums. I understand your point but can do nothing other than read it as Carl has no direct input on any aspect of the game.
Is anybody else having trouble with moving over the traits? my teen had her bars full and i had worked so hard to make sure she would get all of the traits and none of them moved over when she aged up? am i supposed to do something to make them pass on?
When your teen ages up the Character Values UI disappears instead the Young Adult sim will gain the corresponding new trait. So a teen sim with a maxed out Manners Character Value will gain the 'Good Manners' trait as a Young adult. Guide to Character Values here
I just got parenthood today..And I noticed my child sim can ask another child sim if they are single, Adults can also ask the children if they are single??? Is this part of parenthood? I'm asking because this didn't happen until I got it.
Nope, sounds like a bug. Teens have always been able to ask other teens, but young adults and above should not be able to ask teens and/or children. This is a romantic social and as such has always been locked for these age groups. I suggest you take out any/all mods and cc you might be using then delete the localthumbcache.package file from your The Sims folder and test this in a new game.
Is it correct that when you reach lv 7 in parenting, the books dosent help anymore? My sim gets the "Amature Class" moodlet (Dont know if that is the name in english) when she reads the parenting vol 3 book.
Yes, pretty much after reaching L7 your sim will need to use the parenting socials to level up further. Also using the friendly 'get to know' action provides a reasonable boost to leveling. One of the easiest ways to level up is to help the children and teens with their homework and extra homework.
is there a particular emotion the helps build parenting skill? (esp. for building the skill by reading) thanks for all your hard work on the site btw, ive been glued too it since ts3!
The skill building is based around social interactions so 'Happy' is your best best for a slight skill boost. The social interactions 'Get To Know' and 'Ask About Day' as well as 'Loving Hug' give good bonuses, with Get To Know being the best probably out of the three. Helping With Homework is another easy and good boost especially when kids can do Extra Credit as it just give the parent longer a skilling-up time.
hey so is it possible for grandparents to parent grandchildren alone? I'm fond of tragic backstories in CAS, so I was thinking of a Grandmother raising two grandchildren alone, but idk if that's even possible.
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Let's Play Playlist
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Comments (13)
Full parent mode :Active!
*parent runs around like mad thing*
Now how do I turn this off?
I just kinda don't know how.. xD
We have a guide on mods and cc here (click)
Yes, I've had them spend full half days just doing parenting interactions (feed all five toddlers, bathe all five toddlers, etc.) and still no Full Parent Mode. I think need levels are part of the code to get there, and since two of my needs never go below a certain level, it's now impossible.
I assumed Toddler Time Out would NOT be the same as I kid/teen time out.
I imagined toddler Time Out would basically be an adult taking the toddler away from the Mess they just made or out of striking distance of the Sibling they JUST BIT. Taking them to a quiet corner and placing them on a chair before Kneeling down to eye level and THEN disciplining them. Or (Depending on their traits/attitude) saying they have to “stay in the chair until they calm down” Then once they do (If they do) The discipline the parent applies has a higher chance of working and bonus chance or upping communication, emotional control for the toddler.
I NEVER IMAGINED they would purposely increase the Toddlers likelihood of behaving badly and NOT add a Toddler "Time Out"
Guide to Character Values here
I suggest you take out any/all mods and cc you might be using then delete the localthumbcache.package file from your The Sims folder and test this in a new game.
thanks for all your hard work on the site btw, ive been glued too it since ts3!