1. Remove ACR from the game.
2. Disable "See Them All" (the nudity thing).

Particularly embarrassing for No. 2 today for me as I was playing the Sims with my 9 year old niece for the first time. We started off on Sims 3 which is fairly innocent as it's pretty much hack-free apart from Twallan's story progression. But I happened to mention to her when I first started with Sims 2 a while back I had created a family based on her family (my sister, her hubby, son and daughter), specifically for when she came round to play the Sims at my house, so she insisted on playing Sims 2 as well.

Well, due to me previously forgetting to remove "See Them All", she was treated to an full naked image of her father's sim-self having a shower. I tried to cam away as quickly as possible, but it was too late. She thought it was hysterical. Also I had to explain why I was constantly cancelling out her sim parents' actions to go upstairs to "relax" on the bed. "Ooh, they just want to check out the new mattress" was the pathetic excuse I came up with. Oddly enough the behaviour of her teenage "brother" in the game was pretty much how her brother is in real life - interested in money (he's a fortune sim), playing computer games, and chess.

So has anyone else had any embarrassing "boo-boos" when playing the game with another family member?

Hide the Batbox. My little brother found it in the catalog and thought it was HYSTERICAL. He laughed his head off and asked why I had a box with a batman symbol on it. Then he wanted to mess around with the options on there. Needless to say, I don't exactly let him play unsupervised anymore.

Having to explain why "family" is a better aspiration than "Romance" for a married couple. After she had already made the mom a romance sim because the mom would enjoy candlelight dinners and flowers...

Awww. Wonder why he thought it was so hysterical - did he think Batman was gonna pop out?!

Actually I almost had a tear brought to my eye when she showed me a kiddie-oriented website where children can share stories and jokes. It was so sweet in its innocence (and kids don't seem to engage in flame wars like adults do! lol). She'd posted some original jokes of her own and they were actually pretty good. So then I made up some (rather lame) jokes and posted under her name but saying it was her auntie.

I was playing The Sims 2 with my dad's girlfriend's 8-year-old daughter a while back. I helped her make a family (a husband and wife) and when we started playing of course she asked "How do you get kids?" So short of lying and saying "It's impossible in this game" I had to show her (if only we were playing the first Sims when they made babies by kissing!)

So my dad knocks on the door and asks what we're up to and she shouts, "We're making a baby!"

My dad later said to me, "That was an awful moment."

aww :lovestruc

Aww, bless! You have to love their curiosity (and honesty) :lovestruc

My baby brother (6 at the time) was watching me play and I made a family with him. So he kind of saw the husband in this family as 'his' and was always asking me what the guy was up to ingame and being really into it. So one afternoon I was playing this family and you know, romancing a bit so they could have a baby, and my brother came in and saw the husband kissing the wife!! OMG HOW HORRIBLE EW!! etc. He was so mad that I had made his man kiss a girl because it's so dangerous.

It was like walking in on someone, sims edition.

Lol, Ciel Noir.

My younger brother loves poking around in the hacks. He was building a house and made it completely with Simlogical 4-key locking doors. I sighed and went through to replace them. Then he put windows into the garage.

Also I had some random set of leaves from Uni in every clothes category, don't ask how they got there, I just ignore them. (But he's seven!) So before letting him clothe his sims I grab the mouse and said "now what kind of clothes do you want for your Sims? I'll do it for you, go play with my dolls for a few minutes, it'll be much faster, this one is a farmer so does he want overalls?" After letting me give clothes to his first family, and he started a new family, he started whining about why couldn't he do it himself. So I minimized the screen really quick and said, "Oh no, the game shut down by accident! I'll have to restart it! Just wait one minute please!"

I know, I'm awfully mean.

At least I can convince him to give Knowledge aspiration to all his sims, and he doesn't know how to have children yet.

You know, I made that same mistake myself when I first started playing. It took me a while to realize that Romance Sims just want to sleep around.

Oh guys, this thread is hysterical Keep 'em coming! I wish I had a story to share too.

OMG - haha!

I was playing Sims 3 virtually all day yesterday with the aforementioned niece (she was having a "chill at home" day and kept wanting to go back to play it even though I tried to enforce "computer breaks"). I think she's addicted now because when I tried to go home in the evening she was throwing a bit of a strop. I like to think because she didn't want ME to go but to be honest I think she was already attached to the sims character she'd made. I promised to buy her the game.

Was quite funny because (I think?) she's at the age where she sort of knows how babies are made (but not all the gruesome details!) so I was sort of saying "well you know to have a baby mummy and daddy have to go and sleep in the bed" (sounds a bit old-fashioned, but what else could I say? Do it in the bushes?!)

When I went away to cook some dinner I came back and she had lined up some actions. Anyone who plays Sims 3 Sunset Valley would know there's a character called Hank Goddard (the local "heartbreaker", a bit like Don Lothario in TS2). Her sim was currently at work but she'd lined up a "phone someone" and "invite over" action. I asked who she was going to call and she said "Hank Goddard". (I think she was interested in trying to get Hank moved in so they could have a baby).

So there's me sitting there giving her a bit of "auntie" advice, saying, "one thing you should learn for when you're older, NEVER chase boys, especially the ones with commitment issues!"

You should of just said "you can only adopt"


I am 13, so really I guess the only mistake was leaving the volume on when my sims woo-hoo'd. Talk about embarassing. :P

And delete custom adult TV channel if you have(No, I don't install it).

The sim 3 character my niece made was kinda strange looking (although she was trying to make it look like me apparently). So "Jojo Hugkiss" was this blonde-haired woman (I'm mousey) with costume makeup on her face (I rarely wear makeup except when I'm going out), tattoos up her back, chest, ankle and calf muscle (I don't have tattoos), various rings on her fingers (ok ok, I like jewelry), and an everyday outfit which can only be described as "psychiatric ward nurse". I kept telling her to at least change the outfit.

LOL I love all these stories! I'm glad I'm not the only one who has had awkward issues when mixing kids and sims! When I had Sims 1 on my old computer it had the mod that took away the pixels and made them anatomically correct and some hacked items of an <ahem> adult nature. My, middle son was 12 and decided one day to pop in my disc and see if he liked playing the Sims since I liked playing it so much. Fortunately this was before I made my first self-sim or sims of people I know, but even at that I was so embarassed when I came down to our computer room and found my son with this delighted expression on his face watching the Roomies shower. Apparently they had the best hygeine of any sims anywhere! When I re-installed in my new computer, I didn't include those mods and items...especially since my little girl was so interested in playing.

More recently, with Sims 2, I had made our family at my daughter's request and had been playing the way I usually play my families...Dad works, Mom stays home and everything is stable and pretty much "Leave it to Beaver" in nature. Well, recently, in the real world, my husband really made me mad...the kind of mad that causes land wars. So my sim kicked his sim out of the house and Orlando Bloom moved in and I groomed him to be the perfect, faithful, non-scumbag boyfriend. Unfortunately, my 11 year old daughter came over to watch me play while *her* sims game was loading and was shocked to see a new man in the family cuddling with my sim. She ran in and told her dad that he'd been replaced with Orlando Bloom and he told her "Well at least she didn't kill my sim with that sword". That was a really awkward moment. Eventually Orlando went on his merry way and I moved my husband's sim back in, but my husband and daughter still tease me.

I send my son out of the room when my Sims go to WooHoo. That child knows I'm trying to hide something from him. Keep in mind this is an 8-year-old with a developmental/speech delay...but he isn't stupid. But he's not at the point where I can have that "birds and the bees" talk with him.

I keep the censors on, though.

I pause the game until I have him sufficiently distracted with something else. See, he likes to watch and do a running commentary, which I think helps a lot with his speech.

Comedy gold!

Haha, what did your husband have to say?

Reminds me of a story on FML where a guy told his girlfriend he wanted to break up with her by having the Sim couple they'd been playing together break up, and leaving it for her to find!

The Sims is generally quite tame, it's just the hacks some of us put in that make it a bit awkward when children see it.

Haha - that's funny stygia!

Actually I thought of a third thing one should remember if playing TS2 with a younger family member - if they want to "create a sim" make sure you've removed some of the more questionable looking CC mannequins. My niece was making one and I suggested maybe using of the pre-made ones - BIG mistake. Her mother (my sis) had then arrived home and happened to walk in the room just as a selection of rather buxom ladies were displaying their "talents" in the CAS screen. You've never seen me spin a laptop screen round so fast!

(I've come to the conclusion I might be a slightly bad influence on my sister's kids - they wanted me to go round tonight too).

What wonderful read. I love your stories.

My daughter is twelve and she plays quite a lot of Sims 2. Last year they had sex education for the first time at school, which means there isn't really much in the game she'd not seen in the biology book. Now, because I found the different bodyshapes and the only way to know who is what is to put them naked in the shower, I removed blur. My young lady informed me that the men look funny because they are missing *bits* and that I should fix it to make things more realistic...

Not going to though.

Ciel Noir said:Haha, what did your husband have to say?

Well, he knew I was mad at him...really mad...and was glad I hadn't killed his sim clone. Every now and then he comes in while I'm playing and says something like "I gotta make sure that Orlando Bloom dirtbag isn't coming around." And every now and then he jokingly threatens to get into my game and kill the Orlando Bloom sim. Even though it was a serious screw up on his part that caused the "fight", at least we have something funny that came out of it that we can laugh about now that we've worked things out.

Love this

I also think it's cute generally when younger kids questions why something is not like real life. Like why do they just jump and all of a sudden change clothes, and why can't the dogs go down the stairs. So hard to explain why it's like that

I remember I used to watch my big brother play the Sims when I was little (as in 4-6 years old) -- I was constantly asking questions, like why the stove didn't need to be hooked up to anything or why the fire alarm was floating in mid-air or why no-one stole the beds lined up in the front yard or why they didn't catch cold sleeping outside all the time or why the burglar wore a mask that didn't cover his entire face and had white striped on his shirt; "Does he want to get caught?"

Don't play it around 'em until they're past the "questionquestionquestionquestionquestionaboutanswerstoquestionquestionquestion" stage. :P:

My 10 year old autistic brother occasionally will come and watch me play. I have to be careful, but he thinks the game is funny. He thinks it's absolutely hysterical that there are people in the game that are "llamas" and "cows."

Hmmmm...Those all sound like good questions to me.

Why was the fire alarm floating in mid air?! (Mine hangs on a wall in the kitchen.)

Why were there beds lined up on the front lawn?!

And why were his poor Sims sleeping outside?!