How Long Do You Keep Them Teens? I have noticed a trend with my sims. I don't let them stay Teens too long. They do most of their skilling while children. Once they are teens I will play them a few sim-days, let them make some friends or have that 1st date and 1st kiss, and then I have them apply for scholarships and then close out the house. When I have a group of them, I move them to uni in one dorm. I think that I am missing out on some gametime, but since my goal right now is to get to the third/forth generation in my neighborhood (still not there, and only playing 10 families!) I am playing each one in an accellerated rate. Anyone else doing this? When do you send your teens to UNI, if you in fact have UNI?
I'm worse than that. They don't even get a chance for a first date or a first kiss as teens before I'm packing them off to college. Unless there are younger kids at home. Then it's useful to keep them home until Mom or Dad has several days off from work to devote to the younger kids. Also, if the teen has a lot of skills and wants a lot of scholarships I sign them up for an after school job. I suspect my whole game play style will change, though, now that I've ended my story thread. I can slow down. Maybe I'll spend more time with the teens. They're cuter, IMHO, than the kids or the young adults, especially when they "check self out" in the mirror.
I send them to Uni as soon as they've gotten all up to 8 on skills so that they have all those scholarships, as well as the dance and billiards scholarships. I also want them to have their first kiss, go steady and top level on their teen job. I don't like rushing them too much. Poor things have a right to have some "childhood" before they go off to the world of college. I want them to have many happy memories of their high school time. But I also play them till they get to that level, then go to another house and do the same thing, so that they end up going up to college as a group.
For me it varies. I am currently playing a small number of families and I watch carefully to see how first meetings work out with a view to long term relationships. So if a teen of one day meets a teen with some miles on the clock and they hit it off together like a house on fire I will be apt to push on the youngster. Besides I like 'em to have an appropriate sequence of memories ... some of my shy sims get to college with unkissed kissers, but most of them are just ... ... pretty normal teens. I am also starting to select teens' aspirations according to personality type. If their personalities are balanced I use my own random choice method, but if there is a high skewage to one trait then I'll go with that: messy=pleasure; serious=knowledge; playful=romance; tidy=wealth; outgoing=popularity; shy=family Think I'm crossing over me threads here
It depends on the house I play. When I have some that are wanting to get 8 skills up at the same time (feels like it at least) I'll keep them at home until they get to the point when they can apply for scholarships. If I don't like the family very well, I send the kids off to college as soon as they can apply for some scholarships like the academic one. I then just bunch them all up in a house and go from there. Right now I'm kinda in a rut because I'm...*gasp!* bored with the kids I have in college right now. Not to mention I've been having memory dumps like crazy. :(
If it's a new neighborhood I will try to get the first college bound teen as many scholorships as possible then have them scrimp and save for their freshman year until they can buy a small house on campus and apply for a greek charter. When they are about to graduate, I play the next teen in line just until they are both in platinum and good enough friends with my graduating uni-kid to move into the little greek house. My lots are usually littered with career reward objects becuase my adult sims tend to job hop a great deal and I have their kids play with them when ever their fun is low, so by the time their are teens they can usually go straight to uni without having to study any skills in order to graduate.
I love the teen years. I agree that they're just so darned cute. I'm not big on the overachiever thing, and I go by kid ... I've had kids get almost all of the skill scholarships, others who spent a lot of time making relationships with people who could actually help them later (i.e., older than teens), and others who spent all of their time having fun. Most of my teens sneak out at least once, and most also get that first kiss out of the way before they go to college. I've never had a runaway kid. Might be interesting but it's hard for me to be that mean to them ... Oh, and to answer your question, they stay teens until 3 or 4 days before they become an adult, no sooner. The teen years are when they really have time to build the relationships that will help them through life, especially with their family. And, if they get enough skill points, college can be one big party.
For me, it depends on how much I like the particular teen. I do have favorites, and I want my favorites to have as long a life as possible, and plus I just enjoy playing them. I do like to get all the scholarships I can, teen job, date and get first kiss. I generally send my teens when they have 3 days left before adulthood. Sometimes I send them early if there are just too many sims in the house and I need to get rid of some for easier gameplay. And also sometimes to keep couples together. And sometimes the parents of the teens are family sims with the LTW to marry off 6 children. Those teens get rushed off to college so they can graduate and get married before their parents die of old age!
It really depends if I can be bothered at the time to go through there whole teen life,since uni I mainly leave once they have got a few skills up in whatever they are planning get there diploma
