Mostly everyone agrees on the fact that nannies do nothing useful, and are more of a hindrance than a help. I was thinking about how to avoid having to have nannies when I thought about making them selectable for the amount of time the parent is out. (I have a community time hack that lets time pass while a sim is on another lot, so this is possible for work and lot visiting) Is it safe to make a nanny selectable to make her actually take care of the kid?

Don't know how "safe" it is, but, speaking from experience, I've made her select-able (for a few Sim minutes), just to make her actually take care of a toddler, and haven't seen any consequences.

I would imagine that keeping her select-able for long periods of time wouldn't be the best idea, as, eventually, the woman does have to go home (Or back to whatever private Hell is reserved for her). I'm not exactly sure what would happen, should a select-able Sim leave the lot without your control.

Yes, perfectly safe.

I'm kind of surprised EAxis never bothered to even TRY fixing them - people have complained about them from the start. Nobody has managed to mod them either, so that mustn't be doable.
Anyway, there are hacks that keep to social worker from showing up if you leave them alone and keep you from having to hire a nanny to leave the lot.

@NaeShelle- I wasn't planning on making her selectable for forever, just until the parents got home
@Maxon- ok, thanks!

I wouldn't be surprised if thats how they meant her to be.

That is true to an extent, because the developers wanted to add some humor to the game through the nannies.

Nannies...pfft! More like "ninnies" if you ask me.

The thing that EA sometimes forgets: something which is annoying can be funny the first couple of times, but it remains annoying for the rest of its life.

Yeah, besides just how horrible the nannies are there's the trash can kicking, the constant stuff breaking and the jobs that use helicopters (that annoys me so much I don't let sims advance past the career levels that just use cars - I never use military in any case.) Much of the really annoying stuff the modding community solved.

There generally is at least one good nanny in a hood. Only it's luck of the draw whether you get her.

I think the trouble with nannies is, that they just have the default random coding. They aren't any stupider about babies than your CAS-built adult who's never been around one before. It's just that you expect better of them! And, I think, have a right to. If you could make friends with nannies, invite them to move in, and train them you'd soon have her licked into shape; but I can never get my nannies to sit still long enough to befriend them, and anyway by the time they've spent half an hour ignoring the toddler who needs changing who's blocking the stairs, in favor of trying to get a bottle to a toddler who's happily plinking away at his xylophone upstairs, you don't want them to hang around, anyway.

It's also possible that someone doing the nanny code thought (possibly subconsciously) that people should be discouraged from leaving childcare to NPCs, whether for moral or gameplay reasons I couldn't guess.

I just hate that whenever the nanny cooks she burns down my house!! EVER TIME, you would think that after the first offense she would just stay away from the kitchen, but no of course not. I hate having to turn the stove in the opposite direction whenever I leave my nannies with the kids =\

You could use boolprop or such to make her less grouchy and playful, neater and have higher cooking skill if that would help...

There are hacks that let you move visitors (such as nannies) into the household (I have no idea how I moved Melissa Fancey, townie, into a household with her lover using boolprop and have not been able to duplicate it when I found a half-decent nanny!) which would be useful if you're planning on having a lot of kids and the parents both working.

I have never used a nanny. I just move a friend in with the family to live with them and help them out if they need it. From all of the bad things I have heard about the nannies, I don't think I would ever have the patience to deal with them.

They are normal NPC that you could otherwise befriend, move in and even marry if you wish to do so. So it's perfectly fine to make them selectable.

MATY has some hacks that improve the nannies' behaviour

Believe it or not, I actually had an amazing nanny once. When the toddler she was having to look after had full motives, instead of sitting down to watch TV, she actually went around washing plates and cleaning up around the house! It was like a maid and a nanny rolled into one, for half the price! :P

My good nanny is like that. The parents get home at six, so the last thing she does before she leaves for the day is make lobster thermidor! It runs through the food points kind of fast, but they put back leftovers. This nanny will also play with the dog. I'd totally befriend her and move her in if she didn't head straight out the door as soon as the parents get home. And anyway, then she'd never be available again. I can hardly ever get her to sit still to be tipped, even.

My method for coping with nannies is to employ them, turn the fridge to the wall and let the parent sims leave for the day. She can stomp and shout all she likes, she only has to be on lot with the kidlets.

Another thing you can do if there are elder relatives is invite them over until there is a teen or adult back on the lot. It's also free.

I don't particularly love nannies, but I've never much understood all the ZOMGNANNYRAEG either. They're really not that hard to manage, between tricks like turning the fridge around, and just halfway decent sim management.

Making sure toddlers' needs are high before parents leave for work helps a bunch. Bonus if all needs except energy are high, in which case the toddler will be in a crib for a good part of the nanny's shift.

Indirect management of the nanny via the toddler asking for attention, food, or diaper change helps too, as does parking the toddler in front of a toy and clicking any unwanted nanny interactions out of the toddlers queue.

As for the nanny peeing herself, why is that such a big deal? Chances are that she'll mop it up herself, and whatever time she spends in the tub afterward is time she's not needlessly pestering the toddler.

The most inexplicable complaints I see about nannies are "She just watches my TV and eats my food!" Really? REALLY? I think these complaints must come from people who resent visitors in their homes in real life, and don't want anyone ever handling or using their stuff. ("MINE!")

As for the food, sometimes it's helpful to have the nanny cook, but even if the food ends up wasted, is buying groceries a little more often really going to break the family budget? Money is so very easy to come by in this game, it's ridiculous.

I can see extra groceries maybe (but not likely) being an issue in games where the player has hacks for larger bills and lower salaries, but then we're back to turning the fridge around, or making the nanny selectable and directing her to put away the leftovers.

Full disclosure: These days I use a babysitter mod and avoid nannies altogether, but that's really more to do with making the best use of my playables than "hating" nannies.

Okay, well, I do also have replacement nannies who work a LOT better than the defaults, but I still stand by my anti-nannyhate stance.

I don't pay guests to come over to my house. If I did hire someone to do a job and rather than do what they're supposed to they just ate, watched tv, played chess, swim, etc they'd be fired pretty fast! They also break stuff and start fires rather often without hacks. I never use them, I just have the hacks for letting sims leave kids alone without anyone. It does seem like EAxis made them as bad as they possibly could.

Darby
If you dont have any (allowed) means to buy groceries in your game I think the food part of nannies are not-so-good (but easy to handle if you remember to turn the fridge the other direction).

Otherwise I am among those that dont have a problem with nannies. They might not be very clever about sim babies and toddlers but that is the case with many sim parents as well.
Right now, Im not allowed to have any service sims at all and in some households I really, really, really miss nanny!

Well, true - hired help is not the same as a guest, but nannies do have downtime. What are they supposed to do then?

Breaking things... point. That can be managed too, though, by eliminating their access to breakables.

Not saying all these management tricks aren't a bit of a hassle sometimes, and that nannies shouldn't have been coded better, but I do get tired of whining about things that CAN be managed or avoided without too much trouble. There's even the option of not hiring them in the first place. Maternity leave, job changes that result in a parent or teen always being home, etc.

ETA:


Challenge rule, I assume? Will groceries be buyable at the point where service sims can be hired again? If so, it's moot. And how do you replenish food supplies in the meantime? *is curious*

I wonder. Would it be possible (and safe) to create a sim, train them a bit so they know how to handle the kids, and then turn them into a nanny using Inge's teleportor? Can you make nannies with Inge's teleporter? Would that break something? (So many questions...)

Honestly, I think what bothers me the most about the nanny is just that I have to sit there and watch their stupidity. It's amusing for a while, but after the fortieth time of shouting "NO she doesn't need a bottle, she needs to be changed!" it just gets old. They're at least better than my parent sims, though, who just sort of stand there complaining that the kids smell and are blocking their route by being passed out in exactly the wrong place >_>

@Darby: Replacement nannies? I would love some details about that.