This mod is to help significantly reduce all that overzealous checking of toddlers from all other sims in the house teen and upwards. Man oh man, Maxis never get this right. Sure isn't that why they almost never gave us toddlers at all for TS4? Because they have yet to fine craft a toddler minding mechanism, where sims are not autonomously and constantly tripping over themselves to endlessly tend to toddlers. Even when they do not have to.

Sick of sims dragging our toddlers to the potty? Even if the toddler is fully potty-trained and is highly capable of tending to it themselves? Even if the bladder is only a single degree less than being 100% fine? Some poor, grown-up sim is given the auto push to hound our toddlers because Maxis have not changed the formula since TS2. I knew it was not going to be any different for TS4 once toddlers were announced. I knew teens, adults and elders would, once again, be a bigger pain in the butt regarding toddlers, than the toddlers themselves.

This mod helps alleviate that. Especially with those fully skilled toddlers that are great at minding themselves for most motives and needs. Especially if you've set up the home for them to easily do so. Then grown-ups, just back-the-frick-off and let the little ones be.

Grown-ups will still autonomously train and teach toddlers with nice, helpful stuff that you're happy to see them attempt. Or just talk to the wee ones for a bit of interactive social fun. But won't hound them over motives because the game pushes them to "Check" every blasted few minutes. That overbearing crap can gladly go away. And this mod helps make it so.

So it's not a miracle mod that will end toddler checking completely. (Hence renaming mod as it was my own silly fault for boasting "No Auto Check Toddler." Even though this is pretty much what I experience in my own game.) It is so engrained into the numerous toddler interaction files for sims to do it that it would be impossible to fully prevent, short of turning toddlers into mannequins. (Or giving you my Save Game and Mods folder to see it for yourself as I do.) Hence there will not be one mod out there that will switch it off entirely - short of turning toddlers into mannequins. Not one mod out there. So I'll just rename the mod so you know what you're getting. But if you follow what I say here with skilled parents and skilled toddlers, you will experience what I experience, and that is a very significant reduction in toddler checking. I don't actually see it much at all, usually never. But if you are still seeing it without a drop in frequency while using these mods, I dunno, not much use telling me about it as I don't experience it. If it's not due to conflicting mods then it's purely down to style of play. Either way, not much use telling me about it. I can only be concerned with broken mods, not style of play. My sim homes are always designed with plenty for sims to do. But if you're the kind that prefers cosy little barebones, shotgun starter homes with newbie, unskilled sims and only a TV, Stereo and a Toddler for entertainment. Well guess what happens when the TV is off... An autonomous woohoo mod might help in the short term, for something else to do, but in the long term just more toddlers in your little home!!! But seriously, I don't experience it with these mods, so I don't know what to tell you if you do.

New Additions - August 2018

Four new additions to compliment the mod here for less toddler and child annoyances. I did not want to start a new thread for all of these, just best to keep them all in the thread that's relevant. I've been using these in my own game for a very long time, to further balance the toddler and child annoyances. I truly hope you can find the same degree of sanity in your game as I do in mine with all these mods combined. So, the four new ones are -

1 - Less Auto Watch Toddler - The truth to spotting the devious Maxis trick is knowing the difference between Check Toddler and Watch Toddler. Unless you're keeping a very keen eye on the interaction queue, it all looks the same in terms of the sim animations in game. Hence so many say the No Auto Check Toddler mod does not work. I don't blame the lesser observant players who just want to play the game without all the overbearing bullshit nonsense. Just Maxis, for doubling up on different annoying shit that has the same frikking animations it's hard to tell the difference. So, then, this mod too, to compliment the No Auto Check Toddler and lessen the overzealous, overbearing "Watch" shit that Maxis invariably seem to think we enjoy in our games every three minutes. Where and what the fuck planet do they come from?

2 - Longer Watched Toddler Buff Time - To compliment the above. Less watch toddler AND longer buff cooldowns in between watching. No need to get out your calculators as the maths is good. E=MC-Stay-the-frik-away-from-toddlers-squared. Special Toddler Relativity right here, folks. Six whole hours, back-the-MCSquared-off. But remember, if you go into a different room they may age quicker than you quite dramatically while you stand still. (Like sims standing still in time is fucking new to the game, what?)

3 - No Auto Watch Child Play With Toy (And Quicker Watching.)

Sims no longer autonomously watch children playing with toys. They're not missing much anyway, FFS. Why do it at all? So, the biggest complaint of TS4 is sims standing around catatonic-like. And Maxis give us interactions where sims are engaged in... standing around catatonic-like. Fuck me, I thought my maths was bad on the previous mod's description. Explain this stroke of Maxis genius to me, if you dare. Well, I've added extra genius that if you somehow desire to command your sim to watch a child play with a toy, because the child's room is a better place to stand catatonic than in the hallway they were just standing catatonic in, then they will stand catatonic watching for much less time than Maxis wants them to stand catatonic. Are we understanding this game yet???

4 - No Auto Make A Mess

Yes, this mod exists out there already, but none that shorten the time a kid or toddler takes to make that god-awful mess. So not only will they not do it autonomously, but if you're so bored you feel the need to command a child/toddler to do it, then they'll take far less time doing it and you don't actually feel yourself ageing before they finally stop. 

 

cool1_sim_LessAutoCheckToddler.rar  - No Update required

cool1_sim_LessAutoWatchToddler.rar - No Update Required

cool1_sim_LongerWatchedToddlerBuffTime_6hrs.rar - No Update required

 cool1_sim_NoAutoWatchChildPlayWithToy&QuickerWatch.rar - No Update required

cool1_sim_NoAutoMakeAMess&LessTime.rar  - Updated for 1.55

 

 

For patch version compatibility status, please see most recent Patch News thread for the TS4 General Mods section.

 

XML Resource Used:

Spoiler

E882D22F!00000000!0000000000025DFD.sim_Toddler_CheckToddlerListen.InteractionTuning.xml
E882D22F!00000000!00000000000266CD.sim_Toddler_CheckToddler_Minor.InteractionTuning.xml
E882D22F!00000000!0000000000026796.putDownHere_CarriedSim_PottyChair_FromCheckToddler.InteractionTuning.xml

This will conflict with any other mod using same resources. Mod first made and uploaded with Game Version 1.32.1.1020

 

Thanks and Credit: Simsasylum, Sims4Studio, our sims community, EA Maxis, our lovely toddlers (Thank you Maxis for finally bringing them to TS4.)

Thank you soooo much!!

Been looking around for such "no autonomous" mod for a while now and here it is :)

♪Did you ever know that you're my heeeeeeeeroooooooo♪

 

No, like seriously, I bitched and bitched so much about toddler checking it wasn't funny! It was frustrating beyond belief because I often like to play overstuffed households and it was unbearable with a toddler in this house.

You probably know this already but:

YESSSSSSS I had a mod similar to this but it was "less" rather than "no" and I can always trust a coolspear mod! Thanks!

Thank you!

Thank you, what happiness, they are obsessed with toddlers, it makes you crazy, you are great

Edited August 5, 20178 yr by heidi

Thank you!! Now I can rest easy knowing that my pro gamer Sim won't leave tournaments to check on his kid.

Thanks!

As of patch 1.33 your mod seems to no longer be working.

 

They seem to be stuck if you try to have an adult sim potty train them or overall attempt to have them do something (feed them etc), they'll just stand doing nothing till you reset them, then repeat, seems to affect all toddlers and basically all sims in the household will freeze in their tracks if one or more are stuck. I also noticed a "Check Toddler" on the action que of the adult pop up briefly.

Had a look in the tuning files and it looks like it got changed, so I am assume that is why it is causing issues. 

 

Removing your mod resolved the issue. Love your mod so thanks for making it. 

Edited August 26, 20178 yr by Zaf
Forgot some information

Hi @ZafThanks for the report. I hope to be patching this weekend, (later tonight if all goes well) so will probably have that sorted soon. I'm sure the new toddler pack and the patch has added new data (as you say you've compared the files and see a difference.)

I wonder if Maxis themselves have worked on taming the overzealous toddler checking system for this new pack? More than seen in previous iterations of the franchise, Maxis do seem to take a little lead from modders and, putting it bluntly, steal, whoops, incorporate modders ideas into the game to stop overbearing sim interactions. Like they didn't see the annoyance during the development stage?! They wait for non-mod users to complain about it en mass, then point blank copy the exact new settings a modder has tuned to stop or lessen the annoyance.

Either way, I'll know by tonight after I've wound down all my mods in testing and ready my game for the patch and new pack.

I can't speak for how they think during a development phase, but does it make you facepalm sometimes, doesn't it. 

I can confirmed they haven't done anything to the "Check Toddler" Tried with 1 and 5 toddlers, the poor potty hasn't had a break in a very long time, I might have to send it on holiday when its over. Same for everything else, sadly. Looking forward to the update! :)

Edited August 26, 20178 yr by Kimi
Removed quote

@Zaf I removed the quote from your post because there really isn't a need to quote a response when it's right above your post as it starts to clutter the threads. It's also in the rules which you can find here.  Thank you!

Hi @Zaf I patched today and just did my old and new xml extract comparisons via WinMerge, and the ones used for this mod have not been altered by Maxis. When you say you have looked at the XMLs after you patched and have seen a difference, could you be seeing the tuning changes I made for this mod while comparing them with Maxis XMLs? Because Maxis have not altered them for this patch. As yet  I have not been able to play the game to see if there are any of the toddler coding hiccups you mentioned. But once I finish my mod sorting and load up the game, whether I find any toddler glitches or not, it will not be directly due to this mod's XMLs as they remain unchanged by Maxis. Have you installed the new toddler stuff pack? This may well be due to typical Maxis code fluffery we see all the time when they release new stuff. We might need the fast-becoming-mandatory patch for the patch yet again.

@coolspear I had your mod open and compared it with the default Maxis one. I am not a great modder myself, I was able to tell that there were a difference in the tuning files (plus the brief appearance of the "check toddler" on the action bar), but whenever you had made that difference or not, I couldn't tell. I should have stated that, I am sorry. 

 

I do have the toddler pack installed yes, and that's when the issue appeared. Once I removed your mod, I never saw the issues again. I figured if it were Maxis then I would still see the issue even with your mod gone, but I guess Maxis works in mysteries ways. Seems like I have wasted your time and I am very sorry for that. But I appreciate you took the time to check it :) 

Hi Zaf, it's not a waste of time. I have yet to play the game and may very well experience same issues too. It may well be there are new XMLs that came with the new pack that do not like the changes I've made to these XMLs. The new toddler party events will probably have some new take on potty management, that may have a knock on effect on this mod. It would not be the first time a seemingly, perfectly fine mod suddenly does not play nice with something new. I'll know more when I get into the game.

Hi @coolspear Well done Maxis. I would not be surprised if that is the case. I was going to add in the mod again and have a closer look, but based on what you just told me, I think you are the the one who are best qualified to actually see if its a case of your mod not playing nicely or Maxis not playing nice. Either way I hope the issue will be resolved soon, whenever its Maxis or something else. Thanks for replying and thank you for making the mods you do :) Please keep it all up.

Edited August 27, 20178 yr by Zaf

Hi coolspear! You posted on my topic over at MTS and directed me to this mod of yours.

 

I downloaded it and was ready to put it in my mods folder and I realized I had already downloaded it not too long ago. I hadn't played my game in 5+ months so I knew I needed to look for updates for most of my mods, and I must have downloaded some extras and not remembered. I keep my downloads ridiculously organized, so I saw that I created a folder for this mod on the 25th of August. I can't say for certain that I remember a difference after installing it, but a couple of days ago (Saturday, or maybe Friday) I bought and installed the toddler stuff pack. Not sure if that has anything to do with it or not. I just know that my sims are still dropping what they're doing to check on their toddler. I also have the expansion pack, but I'm assuming that shouldn't be an issue.

 

They also drop actions they're already performing just to go watch them play, use the potty and do whatever else - like eat. Like, stop watching your child they're not that perfect and angelic. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the toddlers, really. I like that you can do so much more with them than you could in TS2 and 3. But helicopter parents have never been a good thing. EA, you gave the toddlers a bit more independence, so why do the parents have to hover over them?

 

And let me know if this is the wrong place or not, but I'd like to bring up this: whenever a toddler or child decides to play with their dollhouse the parents (maybe others in the household) are automatically cued to play with them and sometimes it cancels our things they're already doing. It's driving me crazy just as much as the watching and checking on the toddlers.

Hi @Kayleenaand welcome. This is the second report this mod is not properly doing its thing since the latest toddler stuff patch. I know Maxis did not change anything with the XMLs used in this mod, but they may have introduced new stuff in new XMLs that are now overriding this mod. I will get round to checking this in game soon, but I'm currently neck deep in testing other mods in a house with no toddlers. But this mod is next on my list when I wrap up current testing.

In regards to sims constantly getting roped in autonomously to play with toddlers on doll house or watch TV with them, LittleMsSam has effective mods to stop that behaviour, which I use myself, so I won't be stepping on toes and making repeat, carbon-copy mods that I know are already out there. Those mods were moved from MTS to a new site - http://littlemssam.de/   

Well, I know that some mods can only be so deep in the Mods folder, and I have a decent  amount of nesting folders. Is that the case for this one? I'll keep checking back every so often to see if the game required an update of your mod. Right now I've switched to a house without a toddler, but I'll report back and confirm that I'm still having issues once they have another child. Should be within the next day or two.

 

Thank you mentioning the other mods! I'll download them now. :)

(can we double post?)

 

So yesterday my sims' baby aged into a toddler and they've not once had the urge to check on him autonomously, which is great. But this isn't the family that I noticed the mod not working with. I'll have to switch back to that other save and see if it's working. EAxis's update from last night doesn't seem to have an affect on any of my mods, so that's a plus. I wasn't too excited to see an update and have to wait until everyone got a chance to update their mods so I just tested my luck. So far so good, but I will check for updates for all my mods just in case.

 

However, with that being said my sims are still constantly going to watch their toddler, which is just as annoying as them checking on him. Do you know of anyone who may have a mod to stop that? I scoured Google, MTS and other sites but found nothing. Maybe I'm not using the right keywords?

No worries about the double post after it has been a couple of hours. I don't think you have a way to edit after about an hour anyway. 

On ‎05‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 2:40 AM, Kayleena said:

Well, I know that some mods can only be so deep in the Mods folder, and I have a decent  amount of nesting folders. Is that the case for this one? I'll keep checking back every so often to see if the game required an update of your mod. Right now I've switched to a house without a toddler, but I'll report back and confirm that I'm still having issues once they have another child. Should be within the next day or two.

 

Thank you mentioning the other mods! I'll download them now. :)

If you are using the Maxis default "Resource.cfg" file that is situated in the Mods folder, then the amount of nesting depth is very limited to package file mods (no more than two or three deep if I remember correctly.) and zero nesting to script mods (especially the old format of script mods still in rar folders.)

I use a different Resource.cfg that allows for much more nesting depth (five deep) and also for an Overrides folder to sit in the Mods folder, so you can put mods in it in case you want one mod to definitely override others with the same XMLs. (Good for mod testing purposes.)

I've put both the bigger Resource.cfg file and an empty Overrides folder in a rar attachment to this post, if you want to check it out.

- (Folder now found in main General Mods section for download. Pinned to top of first page of General Mods.) 

Yes, I've adjusted my resource file to have folders nested as deep as 8, but everything I have really only seems to go as deep as 5. I still only put my scripts one folder deep for just-in-case reasons.

 

Did you happen to catch my reply from yesterday?

The "Watch Toddler" malarkey? I don't recall seeing any mods out there for that specifically. Then again I don't recall seeing any of it in my game the last time I played with a toddler in the family. It may be an interaction very much heightened by the toddler pack to new, unbearable proportions, that I haven't got round to experiencing yet. With every new pack, Maxis find new ways to force yet more of the same things, like hugging scenarios and opportunities, into the game, padding it out so they can boast they've put trillions of lines of new code into TS4 compared to any other iteration in the franchise. But then I have to add the new-same-crap to the No Auto Hugging mod. Perhaps this is the toddler version of that Maxis disease to just keep adding and padding more of the same thing, under the mistaken impression that all TS4 players love it and want more and more of it. 

Hahaha, yes, it's nearly unbearable. Irritating enough that I'm cursing them for hovering over their child. I've cancelled this interaction probably 50 times within a solid 3 hours of playing. I'm honestly not sure if that's an exaggeration - I may not have cancelled it that many times, but it has been a ridiculous amount, and that's only when I've caught it. They've gotten away with watching him plenty of times, as well. I now have a butler and she's top of watching him.

 

I'm surprised no one's really complained about it. Maybe I'm unlucky? But it's literally just as bad as them constantly checking on their toddlers when your mod is not installed. If you ever get around to looking into it and making a mod I know that I would deeply appreciate it. But since you haven't experienced this maybe I'm just unlucky.

 

I don't have a no hugging mod and I've not run into them doing a lot of hugging, I guess I'm lucky there. Don't think I've even seen them auto hugging. I'm hoping that when Cats and Dogs come out a lot of mods won't need to be created, but I'm sure that won't be the case.

Okay, I looked in game files after searching "watch toddler" and quite a few xmls came up. Most of them are regarding toddlers watching other things. Yet a couple stood out as hidden buffs with cooldown times for what I imagine are older sims to watch toddlers. One with a "has_been_watched" tag, the other with "watch_toddler_distress" tag. The first cooldown runs out after 30 sim minutes (thirty seconds) since last watched. The second buff after 120 mins. Does that sound right? Sims falling over themselves every 30 seconds + 120 seconds again, to go watch toddler after each buff cooldown expires?

I could simply extend both hidden buff times to last six hours (360 mins) before expiring and you could test it, see if it helps reduce the annoyance. If so, and it works, I'll post the mod in an actual standalone thread as a new mod with different versions. 6hrs, 12hrs, 24hrs, that kind of thing. But for now I'll add it here for you to grab and test.

I'll try a bit of testing later myself if I can. But right now I'm just finishing up a set of mods that rework the sims traits system, more traits, better ways to add and remove traits and all known traits can be found in the Aspiration Rewards Store for sims to buy. (Beats the choppy debug method hands down. Everyone loves going shopping. Why should buying even more traits be excluded?) Hopefully uploading that set later today.

 - (Mod removed for updating. Will re-upload it as part of a toddler/child set in the opening post. Please remove older version if you were using it.)

You hit the nail right on the head! After I had made my post I was thinking about it and it really is around every 30 seconds. At one point all three of them were watching him while he was on his tablet. I've downloaded the file and will temporarily replace the original mod with it and get back to you by Sunday with feedback. Most likely sooner if it's a noticeable difference right away. Got home late from work today so I'm not sure I'll have time to play since I'm waking up early tomorrow. Going to a graphic design conference. Should be fun! I really want to play tonight, but you can't just play for one hour.

 

About the traits - I know that would be useful to many and I'll probably download it. I don't currently give them extra traits other than what they earn, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't. Will this include the traits that teenagers earn when they age up depending on how they were raised? I know that in the future I will want to just automatically give those to sims that I'm not playing whom might end up essential to my active family/sim's lives. I am currently switching between two households in another save because the children are 'destined to be together'. Actually I just remembered that I gave these traits to my most recent couple by using cheats. It is a bit tedious.

@KayleenaThere's no need to remove the No Auto Check Toddler mod, if that's what you meant. I did a bit of testing last night and did not see anything untoward going on with an 8 strong household of one toddler, two adults, three teens and two children. There was plenty of times the older lot wanted to just talk with toddler, I think that has a higher push than wanting to talk with other age groups. But, with No Checking and Longer Watched Buff mods, there was absolutely none of it going on. Not once did any grown ups try either for the whole sim day. Then again, that toddler is mighty fine at taking care of their own motives, so that might be an element.

To be honest, I don't know if the Longer Watched Buff is doing anything, as I've not experienced the issue before. Although, as already mentioned, this is my first time playing a toddler household since Toddler SP was installed. I could do further testing without the new Buff mod, I guess. But I'm tired of all the testing I've been doing with the trait mods these last few weeks and I just want to play the game with my tester hat off.

Still looking forward to your feedback on the Buff mod, so that will really put paid to the issue if you are no longer seeing the annoyance as often. And also, if the Checking Toddler malarkey is still over the top in certain houses, is it due to lesser trained toddlers actually needing the help? I don't want to have to create a new, unskilled family to do yet more rounds of testing. I will if I have to, but I'm quite satisfied with the mods for now, especially after my experience last night, so will rely on feedback of players for now, stating whether their toddlers are skilled or unskilled is the key factor. Not to mention, my main sim household are expecting a baby, so the experience of a fresh, unskilled toddler is not far up the road for me anyway. So I'll definitely garner all I need to know when that soon unfolds and all during normal, non-test-like playing - thank goodness.

Before I made the No Auto Checking mod, I knew even skilled toddlers were being overly harassed, especially when being dragged to the potty every five minutes willy-nilly on an adult's silly whim. If I'm not seeing that, then I'm happy for now.

And the new Trait mods, every trait is available. Including all the new Parenthood ones.

That's awesome about the trait mods, I'll definitely be downloading!

 

Ah well, there's no need to test it when there are others willing to do so. :) Just play and enjoy the game like you want to!

 

So I started my game at about 9pm tonight, and played until 10:20, give or take a few minutes. Here are my notes while they're still fresh (not because I literally took notes while playing):

• Day 1
  • After starting my save, mom woke up at 9:20am and immediately had the urge to watch their son.
    • She went to work at 11am,
  • Butler seemingly watched him at 3:40pm (I assume this because she had the "oh, so cute/precious" animation and his headshot popped up in her thought bubble.
• Day 2
  • Dad woke up at 7:44am and went to watch the son.
  • Mom had the want to watch at 9:03am after completing a full queue of tending to their newborn.
  • At 8pm the newborn aged into a toddler - mom and dad immediately had to go watch. Cancelled the interaction for both parents.
    • For mom I cancelled this action two more times (total of three).
    • Mom then decided to check on the new toddler. I cancelled the interaction.
  • Game crashed a few minutes later. Most likely not due to your mod - This is the fourth time in about a two week period, pretty sure it's the computer specs even though people tell me they're fine. (I have 8 gigs of ram and would LOVE to upgrade, but installing it myself is a bad idea as I'm not hardware or super tech savvy. I can remove malware or a virus just fine, and things like that, but pretty sure I'll ruin something if I install hardware on my own.) I'm planning on adding more RAM and upgrading the graphics card. I just don't think that these people are really taking into consideration the amount of CC I have. My Mods folder is currently 2.49 gigs with a total of 1,782 files. My Sims 3 game has much more CC in it and crashes often.

Anyways, back on topic - the mod made a considerable difference. Reading your post and seeing that parents are reacting to their lesser skilled toddlers makes sense for the instant checking and watching once the newborn aged up. I should mention that I didn't age up the newborn myself. I got a notification Thursday that it was her birthday, but I just let it go and didn't do anything because I wanted to see how long it would take the game to age her up automatically. I don't remember an exact number, but it was a few sim-days after I received the notification. I have the age-span set to long - do you think the game gave me the birthday notification a few days before it would force her to age up if I didn't prompt it? This is my first time actually playing through with aging on, so I don't really know the logistics there. I looked up the amount of days in each age-span for the long range and saw that a newborn was just 12 days, but I wasn't paying attention in the game. I did notice that the dad's age had jumped up about 10 days (maybe a couple more) older than his wife. I had given him a potion to bring him back to day 1 of the young adult stage because I noticed there was a considerable difference in days compared to his wife. I downloaded him from the gallery while the wife had I created (before downloading her husband). So when I turned aging on I wanted him back at day 1. Tomorrow I'll be paying more attention as the days pass to see if the number staggers rather than just going up by one.

 

Before installing the mod for testing the dad was maxed out on the parenting skill and the mom had just reached level 9. I've no idea if the butler has any parenting skills or not, but I only allow her to tend to the kids when both parents are gone, otherwise she won't leave the baby alone, but rather never tends to her when she's actually in need. Ironic. The first toddler had all but the imagination skill maxed; he had about 50% left to go to level 5, but he completed it today. Sometime between 9:03am and the afternoon/early evening in-game.

 

Hopefully this information is useful to you! If you'd like more notes or anything I will be playing tomorrow. I don't believe I saved before the game crashed, so I will probably be going through day 1 and 2 again and can let you know of any differences between tonight's play and tomorrow's. If and when you finalize this mod is it possible to make a flavor that so that the adults (and teens if they do this) do not autonomously watch the child at all? I'm thinking if they all happen to be idle around the same time they'll all have the action pop up for them. I'm not even sure if children will watch the toddlers, but I will see in the next few days as the oldest toddler is close to aging up (about a week in-game if I remember correctly).

Thanks for the feedback. If you can stand it, allow the sims to have that watch, because if you cancel the interaction then they don't get the buff, then I can't gauge if the longer cooldown is continually working for you. Just how long between each successful watch is the most important info for now.

However, having said that, I went ahead and cobbled together a No Auto Watching mod for testing. You can keep both in your game, the XMLs don't conflict. But for testing purposes, it'd be better to remove the longer cooldown Buff mod as that will allow sims to follow the default, more often watching, to see if the No Auto Watching is working or not. I'll be testing this today too with a toddler family.

    -  (Mod removed for updating. Will re-upload it as part of a toddler/child set in the opening post. Please remove older version if you were using it.)

Though just a word of warning regarding buffs whether hidden or viewable. Always give time for a buff to run out before putting in or taking out mods that alter that Buff's times. Otherwise the buff can get stuck. An example of this would be, recently I was working on giving a longer buff for Good Workout, when sims use gym equipment. The longer buff meaning they stay off gym equipment for longer periods. Silly me, I kept altering the mod while my test sim was working out or still had the buff from last testing. The buff got stuck, un-viewable, and the sim would never get off the treadmill as nothing told them to, as the buff time-out cooldown got messed up. So either go back to a save before the installation of longer cooldown buff, or make sure no sim has watched a toddler for six hours to let existing hidden buffs expire before removing mod. (Household Autonomy Switched Off for the duration.)

Ah, okay. Learning more about hidden buffs today. :) I will allow them to fulfill that action, then. But before the newborn aged up it seems they wanted to watch their son once a day (given that they didn't have a full queue with little idle time between me filling it back up again. Today I will have them take vacation days so that work doesn't interrupt anything depending on which time they watch either toddler. Last night I wound up starting the game and playing for another hour because I had washed a blanket (the only one that can fit in my apartment's machine) and after I made my post and shut my computer down I went to grab it from the dryer and it was still wet. Had to dry it again, which took 50 minutes, so I started the game back up and got back to the point of their newborn aging up. So now I'll be testing with a maxed out toddler and one building her skills. (My first time with two toddlers so this will be interesting.)

 

I'll first continue to test with the current mod to get more notes because during my second round of playing last night both parents had the action to check on their son. I didn't write it down, though, because it was 2:30 in the morning and I just wanted to go to bed, lol. I can't remember if it was before or after their daughter aged into a toddler. I made a mental note to pay attention to that today.

 

I have two questions: 1) Because I've yet to get into the habit of saving backups of my saves if I do have any hidden buffs stuck from taking out or switching mods how would I fix them? I'm not sure I do, but I wasn't aware the hidden buffs could get stuck, so I could have some and not know. 2) This is unrelated to buffs and toddler mods, but do you know of a mod that stops the butler from auto cooking? I have servings of meals filling up in my kitchen. I tried searching last night but all I found were a few mods to make the butler better, or add features to them, and one mod that makes them put food away, but I prefer to let her leave it out since the mother has the trait stopping food from spoiling. Perfect for the toddlers. I just leave it out on the counter or table and they can feed themselves.

With a stuck or messed up timer on a buff, you'll know mostly by sims never completing certain actions where that buff would normally tell them to quit after it appears  - such as getting the Good Workout buff that tells them to stop exercising and the buff is visible in the UI for four hours thereafter preventing them from doing any more workout stuff. It's harder to tell with the hidden ones as there are gazilliions of them and you just wouldn't know as you don't expect to see them on the UI. Other than seeing sims locked permanently into interactions you know they should have quit doing long since, you can't really tell with the hidden ones.

When it comes to a remedy, it's a bit hit and miss. For the stuck, invisible Good Workout buff I had a few weeks back, I tried so many tricks and nothing was helping. Debug reset of sim, save-quit-reload, travel to community lot. Nothing undid it. I was about to delete the test sim, but thought I'll try one last trick. I put them back on the treadmill again knowing they'll be on it indefinitely. (They'll autonomously quit due to motive failure, but nothing else.) After four sim hours where I knew they should have quit three or four times over, I jumped out of house into town view and moved that sim directly out of the household into a new home on their own. Jumped into their new home and bingo, the Very Fatigued buff was finally there, finally indicating the default four hours before it's gone, after days and days of tireless, non-stop working out. The sim also had the other buff they get when they push the limits during workout - Ha! I should blooming-well think so! Push the Limits was an understatement and a half! 

You can bet, I've been very careful when tweaking and testing that Gym Workout Reworked mod ever since. And if I do ever upload it here, it will come with a very strong warning of dos and donts to prevent buff horror before installation or removal.

As far as butler mods go, I don't really know. I'm not really keen on butler or maids as Maxis always make a half-baked mess of them, haven't got it right in seventeen years, and they're always more trouble than they're worth. The maids and butlers I mean, not Maxis. 

 

Ah, okay. Looks like I'm in the clear then.

 

So I'll be removing the no watch buff mod and adding in the no auto watch. But here are my notes:

• Day 1
  • Dad watched daughter at 9:45 am.
    • After watching he immediately went to check on his son whom was idle at the time.
  • Mom checked on daughter at 2:24 pm after completing bringing a serving to her daughter.I told her to giver her the food.
    • At the same time dad also wanted to check on their son. The want was in his queue waiting for him to finish watching TV.
      • I checked the son's needs and they were full. I also noticed that the butler had done the same thing, She spoke to him and he mentioned the potty, but the resulting action failed.
  • At 2:45 pm mom had a need to check on daughter. Her hunger was low but she was already on her way to eat, so I cancelled the interaction because sometimes it can get a little messy with both sims trying to do what's in their queue when it comes to a toddler going to eat and a sim trying to take them to be fed.
  • at 2:58 pm dad had the action to watch but the bubble had his own headshot rather than either one of the toddlers.
  • At 3:30 pm mom checked on son. Energy was just under 50% but still green. She took him to the potty while his need was full. Logical. my mom always made me go to the bathroom when I didn't have to. In her defense I usually had to pee 15 to 20 minutes later when it was super inconvenient. Oops.
  • At 8:50 pm dad watched daughter.
• Day 2 (made dad take a vacation day)
  • Dad watched son at 8:54 am.
    • Immediately after he had the action to check on him.
  • At 6 pm mom maxed parenting skill. (not sure if relevant, but thought I'd make note)
  • at 6:54 pm mom checked on daughter. She followed in my mom's footsteps by putting her back on the potty after she had just used it. Gotta make sure you really went pee.
  • At 8:20 pm dad wanted to check on daughter. She was eating so I cancelled the action.
• Day 3
  • 8:18 am dad watched son.
    • Action was the one with his own headshot.
  • 8:39 am dad checked on his son. He had high needs but told dad he needed to potty. Little liar.
  • 10:50 am mom watched son, then immediately checked on daughter.
  • 9:13 pm mom watched son.
• Day 4
  • At 7:30 am dad checked on son.
  • At 9:20 dad watched son.
    • He then immediately had the action to check on him but it dropped.
  • At 2:30 pm both mom and butler watched the daughter. Weirdos.
  • At 3:09 pm both parents watched to check on son. I cancelled the interaction.
  • At 3:35 pm mom wanted to check on daughter while dad was on his way to give her a bath.

That's all of my notes for today. I was anxious/excited to put the no watch mod in because I'm just not into them going to watch their child, no matter how limited. I speed through the day so 6 hours still makes the auto watching seem like a lot, especially when both parents have the same days off in a row. I've added your no auto check mod back in, so I will let you know if I run into the issue of them still checking on the kids. I didn't have a single issue before the daughter came along (with this save, that is).

 

That Gym Workout mod seems very tedious. I'm pretty sure it would drive me nuts, lol. I think modding in general would drive me nuts. I want to test my hand at recoloring since I have all the tools necessary but it just seems so time consuming. If two pieces of clothing go together nicely but the swatches both don't have complimentary colors I tell myself 'you can recolor this' and then it never happens. Maybe one day.

 

This is my first time having a butler in Sims 4. She seems to do okay, except for tending to a newborn when the newborn actually needs fed or the diaper changed. But I noticed with sims that if they're tending to a crying newborn instead of doing the obvious they will cuddle, coo at, etc. The baby literally smells of poop and they think cuddling him will do the trick. No, guys, no. I've noticed that it doesn't matter how high their parenting skill is. But also the butler needs to stop cooking meals randomly. There might be a pattern, but I'm never paying attention until I see 3 different meals on my counters.

 

 

Edit: Bad news. Dad just went to watch his daughter while she was eating. That's with the no auto watch installed. They're also checking on them, too. I had to cancel the mom's interaction quite a few times. :( I don't believe I have anything conflicting with these mods because I have nothing else that deals with toddlers. I have one mod that allows teens to gain the parenting skill. It really is baffling why I'm having this issue.

Edited September 17, 20178 yr by Kayleena

Thank you for the detailed report. I'm seeing same. But I know due to the amount of XMLs that they either go to watch a toddler who's doing a specific interaction, playing, eating, dancing and such, or there is just the go watch them anyway, even if they are doing nothing, just for the heck of it. Problem is they are all named in game as "watch" so it might all seem like it's a single interaction governed by one simple autonomy XML. Too many XMLs to get stuck into and end it outright, for all the reasons they are pushed to do it. I have just been concentrating on the pointless go watch just for the heck of it.

But in regards to the Check Toddler, I am simply not seeing it at all from any of the grown ups, teen and above. Three sims days have gone by and simply not once. So I won't be looking into that mod as I don't want to fix what is not broken, certainly not in my game.

Regarding the latest two mods, Longer Cooldown Buff and No Auto Watch, I'll be keeping both in my game now, for testing as a medium deterrent for the aimless watching. But if sims want to go watch a toddler who's eating or dancing, then it's just going to happen. I've never found that to be overbearing, and I still don't, as I'm just not seeing it at a frequency that makes me want to scream. (Mileage varies per player, I imagine.) Maybe if I'm playing a household with unskilled parents and an unskilled toddler, I may change my mind if it does start changing pattern and becoming intolerable. Maybe due to the skills and traits I give toddlers, that makes them dynamite at taking care of themselves and the rest of the house knows to let them get on with it. They can certainly talk the ears off a toddler, and do the various watching interactions, but it just has not annoyed me to any great degree to want to go to war against it with an arsenal of obliterating mods.

The over-Checking did rile me, and in my game that's been brought to a satisfactory end. (Although it was mentioned there may be a potty glitch I have yet to see. Sims reset trying to take a toddler to potty. I keep forgetting to test for this as they're not doing it autonomously in my game. I'll have to command them to do it during next session, if I can remember.)

And as a helpful note I should have said yesterday. The No Auto Watching has also had the time reduced on it to only two sim minutes. The default time was maximum thirty minutes watching. That's far too long a timespan for doing something so pointless. For a very long time now the community have been complaining to EA and Maxis about the dire bottleneck autonomy push in the game, that can have sims standing around for hours doing nothing. And what do they do? Put coding into game that recurrently forces sims into interactions that equate to them standing around for ages doing nothing (watching) The logic of Maxis is a marvel to behold. 

It's understandable that you can't fix something that's not happening in your game. I just wish I could find the cause for it in mine. Your toddler mods are the only ones I have, but off the top of your head can you think of anything that might conflict? I have noticed that whenever they do complete the action they're always going to the potty afterwards. Should have mentioned that before since it is a direct pattern. Still not sure if it's relevant, though.

 

I'll add the cooldown back in my mods to tame the watching, at least. And yes, I prefer the toddlers to be pretty independent, because while they're a great addition sometimes I just want to focus on one specific sim for a day. Sorry kids, you're just going to have to go get that plate of food yourself.

 

Anyways, I appreciate all the help you've given me, with at least creating the no watch and watching cooldown mods. They are helpful, and I'm glad that I could help you in any way, if I helped at all. For now I'm going to peruse more mods before starting my game for the evening.

I don't really know of any other toddler mods out there, except for the link I gave the other day to littlemsam. That's all I use for toddlers. Her three to stop sims being dragged into activities with toddlers, and my ones here. That's all I've needed so far. And I know they don't conflict.

I have done a rework of the beds here, including the toddler beds to help with their motives while they sleep. That certainly helps with the day to day lives of the toddlers. Also the increase in traits helps to make them more self-sufficient. A combination of all these factors have ended all of the earlier annoyances when toddlers were first released, and now, for me, they're just fun.

I'll look into some things and if I find a fix, then great, but if not, I'll just learn to deal with it. Thanks again for all the help!

Thank you for this much needed fix!

Updated for Patch Version: 1.36.99.1220

Maxis did a whole bunch of recoding on the XMLs here. Lots to do with motives, relationship bits and such the like, that I can only presume is a bid to bring all that overbearing toddler checking down to tolerable levels. You might find it is now tolerable, acceptable and far less annoying in plain, default play. If not, this mod is still here for you to put it to rest outright.

Also I've further amended the mod to take out a block of false advertisement coding that was set to being 100 per cent  "Caregiver_PlayWithToddler." Ouch. Now that's been removed, the caregiver is not under such intense, 100 per cent constant pressure to tend to toddlers autonomously. I've learnt that sometimes, false advertisement coding on an XML, can work independently, going outside an overall autonomy blocking put on an XML. Where the XML says no, the false advertising is too strong to resist. And at 100 per cent?! You gotta be a true Master Jedi to resist such an intense pull of Dark Side Force. So, short of hiring Yoda as your toddler's caregiver, out the coding comes. (Anyway, Yoda's too busy cleaning dishes for us in another mod. )

As "A New Hope," that might go some way to help those players who say this mod was not doing very much for them.

I will be so happy to have this back in my game tonight!  I had a sim wake a toddler up last night to potty train just after they had spent a couple hours potty training and just put the kid down to sleep!  

Wow! So even all those new Maxis 1.36 changes don't make a dent in the overzealousness? The Maxis changes where quite extensive. I was almost certain that I was going to abandon this mod thinking Maxis got it under control. Well, isn't that a thing. What the heck difference do all their 1.36 changes make in default, vanilla game? Sheesh. I'm asking proven mod-users that question! The very epitome of redundancy. I don't even know, because I won't remove the mods either. Ah, well. Good luck to vanilla.

I started on new and clean "test" world last night so I could get a clean run to see how mods and such are working together now.  I know of at least one, not of yours, that said it had been updated but the kid still turned into a bear in my last "test world".  Ever since I was introduced to my first UI mod in one of the first games I played, I've never spent much time in  a vanilla game before I go searching for mods. :D  I have a healthy respect for all modders in all games I play and wish studios paid more attention to the work their fans do that ultimately puts money in the studio's pockets. 

When I fist loaded 1.36, without any mods or CC, all I did was try to keep Sims from bottoming out their needs from the time they went to bed, but didn't stay there, till the time they made it thru the next day. I had loaded a couple of families with either a kid or one on the way.  YIKES!  LOL  Then I played LOTRO for a day until some mods were starting to come back online. Still working through my CC and batch fixes, slowly but surely.  

Updated for Patch Version: 1.36-to-1.39

Fist of all, thanks for all your hard work with all your mods.
Since the last patch  the mod doesn´t seem to work anymore. Before the patch, I had 2 toddlers, and everything was perfect. The adults left them alone, unless I wanted it differently. After the last patch my Sim got pregnant again, got 3 toddlers. And now the adults are constantly checking the toddlers again. They are not interested in anything else. I had to turn off free will.

@Chaleara If you're referring to the patch from this Thursday, I believe Coolspear hasn't had a chance to update his game and check things out. Playtesting mods is not a good idea and you should really wait until they've either been verified as compatible or updated by the creator.

10 hours ago, Chaleara said:

Fist of all, thanks for all your hard work with all your mods.
Since the last patch  the mod doesn´t seem to work anymore. Before the patch, I had 2 toddlers, and everything was perfect. The adults left them alone, unless I wanted it differently. After the last patch my Sim got pregnant again, got 3 toddlers. And now the adults are constantly checking the toddlers again. They are not interested in anything else. I had to turn off free will.

After patches I always start a new game, new sim families, new save and play that until my favorite modders have had a chance to work their magic.  I find I make new sim friends that become families I use in my main game.  Just an idea to pass the time.  . 

This is not a problem. If a mod doesn´t work anymore, I take it out. I let toddlers age up now, I almost went crazy.  :D  Coolspear should take all the time it needs to check the mods. It´s a lot.  I didn´t  want to make pressure, just point out that the mod is not working anymore. :) 

Updated for Patch Version: 1.40

thank you!