More Awesome Than You!

I thought once the social worker came for your kids, you were blacklisted for life and would never be able to adopt again?

I'm intentionally creating a Very Bad Life for a couple of my sims, mostly just to see scenarios that I never get to see otherwise (such as the social worker).

Anyway, as the title states, they were still able to adopt again and thus were able to get back their own baby.

I don't much care for that. It's not the sshack or something letting me do that, is it?

I have up to Free Time. Did some EP along the way change/bork this? I can see how it could go unnoticed, as how often does anyone get a social worker visit anyway? I hadn't had one since one of my first play sessions ever, and that was only because I never realized homework was something kids dumped randomly on the grass, and it was my job to find it and make them do it. When it happened this time, I was shocked to see that the kid's hunger and social were literally completely bottomed out, and it happened many hours after the "feed and do stuff with your spawn or we're coming for them" warnings.

I don't know from getting blacklisted (though I also would have assumed that would be the case), but I do know that the adoption pool works on a last in/first out basis. Since the kid in question was the last to be taken, she would come up as the first available to be adopted. And if you have things like empty templates and anti-spawning hacks in place, she may well have been the only kid in the pool at all.

I've tried adopting right after the social worker took away the kids, and got the message that I'm a bad parent and adoption is not available for me, or something like that. After waiting a couple of sim days, they were able to adopt again.

That I do know, but should they be able to successfully request an adoption (potentially of their own neglected child) minutes after the child has been taken away? I've never heard of that before.
If this has always been the case, a lot of so-called sim trauma has been needless.

You'll get your kid back tomorrow at 10 a.m. Cry me a river.

this is veering in a slightly different direction from the OPs question, but this might be a good place to use the study...parenting (which as far as I can tell does nothing else).  If seasons is installed (that's the one with study parenting, right?) then the people must study parenting in order to be allowed to adopt again if the social worker has removed a child.

Studying parenting came with freetime and it allows you to click on the baby to see what it needs. The need shows up in the baby's thought balloon.

If I remember correctly, though, it requires you to schlep all the way over to the crib (or wherever the baby has chosen to pass out) and pick up the child to assess her needs. Totally useless, really, since all you need do is wait for the Green Cloud o' Funk^TM to signal the need for a change. Then change baby, play once if desired, feed bottle, cuddle once or twice, then back to the crib until the next Funk Cloud appears. Sims babies are ridiculously simple.

The time it takes to Study Parenting is seriously disproportionate to the benefits. And though it doesn't function this way, what I believe cwieberdink was saying - and if it was, I agree (and if it wasn't, I'm glad I thought of it ;p) - is that this otherwise inefficient use of a sim's time would be well suited to a Social Worker scenario. If children are removed from the home, the parent(s) could be required to complete Study Parenting before the child is returned. To further flesh out this scenario, there could be a Headmaster-like stage where the Social Worker returns to rate the Environment and food prep abilities, and if the family passes this inspection and has successfully Studied Parenting, the child/children would then be returned.

I actually think this sort of scenario should have been implemented in the base game in order for any prospective parent to adopt a child. Adopting a baby (toddler, child, etc.) should involve at least a *little* more hoopla than ordering a pizza.

I've gotten to the point where they only get to study parenting (and any of the new AL 'skills') if they roll wants to do so, and then only if I dont' have something better planned for them. :)

It was.....


But I love your fleshed out idea!!  that would be an excellent use of the study parenting, and much closer to real life social worker scenarios.  And that way, if the social worker comes, either before an adoption, or to assess the home for return of a taken child/ren, if there are roaches, trash, rotting food and dirty nappies everywhere, well, they wouldn't get their kid.

I absolutely love that idea as well!  I totally agree it should have been in the game since day one.  As it is, I think the only consideration they make when deciding if "you'll make a wonderful parent" is how much money you have in family funds.  Pretty stupid, if you ask me.  :P

In the base game, the ability to re-adopt a seized child relies on memories.  If both parents have a memory of the event, they'll be black-listed.  If, however, one parent is missing the memory (because they were at work or something when it happened), they can retrieve the kid with a phone call.  It's more difficult to recover a runaway pet or to get into private school than it is to adopt a child. ::)

Well, that must be what's going on here. For some reason, the mother had no memory of the social worker visit even though it happened right in front of her face since they are mostly living on the lawn. I specifically checked her memories because her relationship with the toddler was about negative 88 or something, so I wanted to see if it was possible for that memory to be green.

The father was dead at the time the kid got taken away and at the time the mother placed the call to re-adopt. He was resurrected as a zombie by the time the kid showed up though, so she's listed as his again as well.

Maybe she just didn't care? Heh. More likely EAxis didn't see fit to put in a 'positive' memory for that. How do you even get a negative relationship with a toddler, anyway?

I was wondering that as well.  It's not like you can argue or fight with them, right??

I think neat Sims can become furious with them for leaving a mess.  Either that or mass cheatery.

Toddlers cannot leave a mess. Even puddle rage doesn't apply to toddlers because toddlers have diapers and do not leave puddles.

Aside from negatives with teasing siblings, I've seen toddlers go "--" on people who try to play overly familiarly with them, and the initiator also gets the negative points from the rejection. So it's possible to be negative with a toddler. And if the toddler's in a crappeh enough Needs state to be in danger or removal from the home, then - especially for certain, unfriendly personality combos - more and more interactions are going to be rejected, which would help rack up the negative points. I think to get that low (the referenced -88) you'd have to pretty much spend all your time antagonizing a hungry kid, but I still wouldn't hazard a guess as to whether it's possible to go quite that low without cheat-ly assistance.

I cheatily-ed it.

What gave me the idea to make it that bad though was the fact that the mother kept trying to autonomously "play with" or some other type of social, and the toddler was in such a terrible mood, she kept rejecting it. They got well into the negatives with each other all on their own though. I dare say they actually could have gotten to -88 on their own because there aren't many objects on that lot, so there's not much else more exciting to do than "bother baby." I just wanted it to happen NAO.

Also trying to get the toddler to pee while they are hungry and/or tired will cause ----ve hits to relationships.

Really?  I have often tried to potty train my sim toddlers when they are so tired they end up canceling the action.  I never noticed any loss of relationship.  How tired do they have to be?  I don't think I've ever tried to potty train them when they're hungry, though, since I usually have just given them some Smart Milk.

It doesn't have to be very low hunger, more just their mood in total.  I've had toddlers reject potty training with low green asp, 50% hunger, social energy and hygiene (and requisite low bladder, of course).

This can happen if an adult who was not present at the time the kid was taken away makes the call. I think it also works if the spouse/other parent is not married to the mother. The game assigns responsibility to specific sims, so moving in a "blameless" sim and having them adopt the child will bring the kid back.

I have no idea how this applies to FT or AL, but it worked for me with the base game.

Toddlers and kids can be taken away if their social drops too low, I think.