ok hopefully this is the right section to put this under (im new to the threads..)

So heres how it started. 1 teen sim, 1 child sim, 2 parents. 2 parents had a baby. the baby grew to a toddler, then a child. As that happened the teen sim and child sim grew to young adults and moved out together. So then it was just 1 child sim and 2 parents. Since the parents had this baby really late, they were really old by the time she was a child. The mom died of old age, and then the dad died from a fire. So the only one left is the child. So I freaked out and thought my precious child (who was a bright straight A student with a lot of skills) would be taken by the social worker, or at least I assumed from TS2 (because I never had actually dealt with children left over, parents dying, social workers, etc in TS3...). So a notification pops up saying something like "the social worker is here to take your child!" but the town baby sitter arrives (who is a teen) and just walks around for a little. I got paranoid he would snatch my girl all of the sudden, so I went into buy mode (with moveobjects on) and made a little fence box in the corner of the lot and put him in there. *Sidenote: the girl has an imaginary friend, but I had her go to sleep to get it in the doll form and put it in her inventory to make sure it went with her wherever. Anyway, I let some time pass, then let the babysitter out. He pretty much just walked into the kitchen and ate my food and read a book. He just stood there the whole time just hanging out. I realized maybe hes like the girl's "fake" teenage brother AKA permanent babysitter until she ages to a teen. But I wanted her to live alone, so I was about to delete his body in buy mode, but didnt. I forgot about him for some time and played as usual with my child and her imaginary friend. I checked back to see where he was and I didnt see him anywhere. I've never seen him since so its basically just the little child-girl and her IF living in this big house alone. *Sidenote: I think the girl was about 8 days from aging up. And thats my story...

Anywho, DOES THIS HAPPEN TO ANY OF YOU!? cuz im confused. I really dont think the game would let a child live alone. Don’t get me wrong its kinda cool but is this like a glitch? I have all EPs and SPs and all updated (1.22). Sorry this was really long its just I wanna make it clear and include anything suspicious, cuz, well, its SIMS and what isnt? thanks for taking the time reading this! (unless you scrolled to the bottom and just read the last sentence. lol )

I have no idea about this but!!!! Keep us posted if your little one manages to evade the authorities!

I was under the impression that Sims were saved from death while the kids were young =/ I don't know about Children, but I have had a Sim who was a single parent with a toddler who refused to be electrocuted. I guess Child Sim's CAN take care of themselves though. I mean they can grab food from the fridge or whatever.

Please keep us posted though I may need this in a bit for my legacy

Incredible, your story intrigued me to test the survivor story out, I killed the parents right away the bin, leave alone the toddler, yup, she live on, playing with her imaginary friend like nothing happens, this is weird, I always believed that social worker would come as soon as the parents died. But they didn't...hmmm...I have NRAAS mods, though I don't remember I modified anything related to "allow child family".

I am beginning to wonder if the game sees the Imaginary Fiend (ooops!) as another sim in the house and doesn't regard the child as totally home alone. I wonder what'd happen if the IF wasn't there?

That's an interesting theory, fairycake89- if that's true then it's a bit of a strange oversight by EA! I bet they never envisioned that happening!

wow! I didn't know I would get so many replies! I loved reading them and yes I will keep y'all posted. I only played for a few human minutes after I posted this and not much happened. EDIT* actually, I went to edit town mode and changed active household so I could place a copy of the household in my bin to test out other things that might harm the original one. So I tried and it wouldn't show a "copy to bin" button. I thought maybe you can't do that no matter what in the game but remembered I did it before. So then I tried going back into the household. Now remember I was in the "changing current household mode" AKA "select a house to play in mode." So I clicked select house and a blue house bubble didnt even show up over the house! I freaked and realized the game wouldnt let me back in cuz its just a child in it. So, using my smartnes :P, I quitted the game and didnt save. I booted the game back up and there she was, the only one in the family photo, and clicked play. Everything was back to normal . Since I couldnt copy the household, I made a second temporary copy of that game to test out and see what would happen if I turned the IF real. So in the copy of the game I gave the IF the metamorphic potion (or whatever it's called) which I had stored away from the girl practicing chemistry and there wasn't anything unusual. He simply drank it and turned into a male boy and they both lived together as 2 children alone. They both also had school to go to. But again I only played in this game for a few min and then deleted the game to save space. (I still have the original don't worry . This is why I included that she had an IF in my original post, cuz fairycake89 maye your onto something! maybe the game thinks the IF is like the adult caretaker or something, but idk tho cuz in the second copy when the IF was a real sim nothing happened. Maybe I shoulda played a little longer. Also, just like you, noxnoxnox, I do have a bunch of mods installed, some of them from NRAAS too. The only thing child-related-ish I can think of is the modified curfew for teens and children. hmm..And just in case for more info, I used the babysitter once before when the girls older sister was still living there and she wanted to go to the club while everyone else was on "vacation." I just feel like it has more to do with the babysitter/social worker/game bugs more than the IF or if EA screwed up. Oh! And to reveal what family, it's actually the Bachelor Family in Sunset Valley that came in Generations. haha. maybe I shoulda just said that earlier. Well, I will continue to play as normal! Just wondering what happens when she (and her non-real sim IF) ages to a teen. :D

I tried making a family I wouldn't care about and I killed the parents right away leaving a little girl and a toddler girl. The social worker came as soon as grimmy left and my game went to the neighborhood view. I never even got to see the social worker put the kids in the car like on sims2. I did however make the family with some distinctive features-- purple and orange hair--so I can identify those orphans if they come up for adoption or show up at the school, or in town.

well then i guess it was some bug in my game that made it not do what it did in yours...but good idea with the orange and purple hair!! i like

This happen to me once in inactive household.
I was using weapon mod, playing as a psychopath killer. The Sim went in house and kill every adult, leaving toddler along. When social worker come, killed. Therefore the toddler sitting on the porch alone, cry cry cry and cry..... until the day become a child.

Awww, the serial killer didn't kill the baby because deep down he has a heart. Cute! :lovestruc

But if you had pre-made this child and toddler they didn't have Imaginary Friends? Because that seems to be the key here.

I'm going to test this, make a married couple, get the woman pregnant and make the baby/ies cuddle the IF a bit, then kill the parents. We'll see!

btw guys, I sorta went to edit town mode and changed active household to start a new household. So i did and didnt even realize i exited out of the "child only" household. So in my new household (which is just a female adult) whenever i go to map view there isnt a house icon over the house of the child living alone in. So in short i cant really get back in the house with the little girl. SIKE! i have a simple solution. Move any old random adult into the house, and hopefully the girl and her IF will still be there. Then, rather than killing the adult, i will use testingcheatsenabled true and shift click on the adult to say object... delete it. And viola! the adult is gone and its only the child there! and i dont have to worry about grim or the social worker as adult did not die, but was deleted by the game. I wonder if this all is a bug that was fixed in patch 1.24. hmmm....

I had something similar happen.. One of my homeless sims.. Father and child daughter.. Father moved in with girlfriend and left the daughter (still child) behind.. Yea regular sweet heart he was.

Anyways I had not realized it till I ran across the father at some party and he was shacked up with the girlfriend. The girlfriend was pregnant by him as well. Like I said a real sweet heart,

According to the game the daughter, still a child, was still living in the lot where her and her father had lived..

So I sent my sim to check it out.. Figuring the game was just registering the daughter and acting as though the lot still had a sim there.

Nope the daughter was there. and no there was no baby sitter there either.. Just the daughter... I thought it was a small glitch or some such.. Now I wonder what was up with that

By the way I run Twallen mastercontroller, woohooer and his woohooer tuning mods as well as awesome mad with a smattering Anach mods.. None of the mods that I am aware of would allow a child daughter be left alone in such case with out the social services swooping in...

By the way she did not have an invisible friend.

ok update: I just got done playing. so in my other household, there wasn't a home icon over the girl's house.so I went to edit town and then change active household. I went to CAS and just whipped up some random lady and moved her into the girl's house, as I thought she might be there. well she wasn't, but her imaginary friend doll was sitting on the floor in her room in its toy/stuffed animal form. So first I made the lady adopt a female child but im pretty sure it was just some random girl. -_- Then I just forgot about the adopted girl and moved on. I used twallans master controller to go into all the lists of sims and family trees and everything. There wasn't one trace of my little girl except I saw her imaginary friend in his child form in the list on children. I felt like all I kept seeing was this damn imaginary friend and not her! lol so then I used the TCE cheat and shift clicked on the mailbox and made the lady know everyone in town. (The weird thing is she didnt gain any celeb pts for it but whatevr) so I scrolled all the way thru her relationship panel and I don't think I saw the girl, (i can be kind of a klutz tho so who knows lol) but I did see her one friend in the relationships panel, who was actually a young adult now (rather than a child). So I invited him over and shift clicked on him and added him to the family. So now its the girl's old childhood friend and the lady I made in CAS. I looked at his relationships and saw nothing but the lady. I realized he was the NPC paper boy So I went to edit town mode without saving and deleted the household as I wanted the girl's house emtpy and sort of kept as a memorable thing lol. now I feel like the little girl is just no where to be found in my game, especially since the master controller didnt even find her; she's lost; gone forever; deleted! idk. what do u guys think? did the social worker take her after I switched out of the household like 2 RL weeks ago? or did the game just dump her? im sad lol I really want her back...help me

Something similar happened when I first got the game and was learning about moving houses. Anyway I had a toddler that I moved into a house with my YA's best friend then had him move back in with my YA sim. So the toddler was left to own the house. I actually had the friend try sleeping on the bed in the now toddlers house only for this little toddler to get a dialogue bubble saying Clark was being inappropriate and was made to leave. It was absolutely hilarious because the next day I went back and rang the bell with the toddlers dad and she came and opened the door, waddled out and plopped down, crying because she was hungry and sleepy. I fed her, went back home and off she went back into her house.

LOL this all must be some bug..idk. The game must think all teens, children, toddlers (and babies?) are adults. But thanks for sharing. Its just my girl is lost deep in the game!

Yeah it sounds like the game deleted her. Maybe because she was left there, the social worker came to get her and the cleaned her out as an existing sim in your world. That sucks, I wish I could help. You don't have an earlier save?

Well im thinking if i make an adult sim adopt using the master controller she might pop up after a few tries. Thats the one option i forgot about doing. Ummm idk maybe i can try going into my saved games or whatever in the documents/electronic arts folder. I'll try and see but i also dont wanna lose my other family going on in Sunset Valley. Thanks though.

I wish there was a mod that would just get rid of the social worker entirely, I have one family, The Hardesty Family, who has a little girl named Sarah, after Sarah's parents and her twin brother die in a fire, Sarah is supposed to live alone in the big mansion and explore it finding all kinds of mysterious secrets while occasionally going to the backyard and mourning at her family's graves under the big oak tree. Eventually Sarah would become a teen.

Sims 3 won't let Sarah live alone

This can't happen with me so i don't know about it but i am also want to know so above some answers are so good.

Sims 2 made it easier to get them back, well technically it was Insim, you could use the Summoner, and the Family Tree to bring the child back, add them anywhere without the dimwitted child forgetting their parents (Dimwitted's the right word if the child loses his parents in a fire, and forgets they even existed just because some other family adopted him). I miss using Insim when I am playing Sims 3.

I never had this in Sims 3, then again I only had a kid taken away once, and that was just to see if the SW would come. However this happened in Sims 2. The parents died for some reason and the toddler, lived in the house all by herself. No SW came, her motives even went low but nothing, so I played her right to Teen and she was never taken, must have been a big glitch.

You could "technically" make a child live on their own. A couple of ways: 1is to build several basements (I think the limit is 4), no way out of it and teleport or move the adults/teens into that area, so they will never talk or interact with the child. Or do it on a community lot with the basements, then use testingcheatsenabled, and then they won't even get to scold the child if she doesn't do her homework or misses five minute of school. Of course you have to see their icon (And occasionally move their hunger up so they don't die, which can be used with motives). The child pretty much has the world at her fingertips more then Sims 2 do. There's the diner for her hunger needs, IF and other sims for Social. So she would be still on her own, because the parents wouldn't be inside the house.