What is the deal with toddlers and their obsessive need to sit at the top of any staircase?

I was watching my Sims go about their day autonomously and peeking from house to house and in nearly every instance of a home with a toddler and a staircase, the little buggers would inevitably head to the top of a staircase to sit. Often causing routing issues with their parents or teens, but not always thank goodness. I even watched one or two get reset due to this. So I was curious, is this some programing plan of EA? If so WTF? Or is it just a product of some other thing to do with the programing and that is just the outcome of that programing?

It's simple: toddlers are freakishly clingy and they like to chase someone from adults, but they can't go down the stairs. That's why they sit on it. By the way, I saw a small breakdown of the stairs, but the reason was that my sims threw dirty laundry there. I had to replace it.

Often, when I direct an adult to do something with a toddler and there isn't enough room to perform that action, the adult and toddler will head downstairs to the main floor if there is more room there. Of course, as Sara points out, the toddler can't go down the stairs, so ends up stuck at the top of the stairs. To get around that, I try to get the adult to pick up the toddler, take them downstairs, and then perform the action, but sometimes there isn't even enough room for that. A nursery on the main floor might help.

It isn't really too much of a problem, or even a complaint really. I was just wondering why every toddler heads to the top of the stairs, seemingly for no reason. Often, at least during my last viewing, the toddlers did this without any adult nearby or any other sim attempting to do anything with them. For one instance; mom and dad were both working out, big sis was watching TV and the twins walked outside and sat at the top of the stairs. Then they'd walk into the house, play for a sec, then both go sit at the top of the stairs again. Their thought bubbles showed were happy so they didn't want for anything right away. Eventually, after some time, mom came and put one of them in their crib, and gave the second a bottle but then left her sitting outside before she went to bed. Dad got done, took his shower and finally put the other to bed before he headed there too. Again, this was some time later in that sim day.

That is just one example, but it seemed to be a thing with all toddlers even when they didn't need anything. It's an odd thing... sort of like how they will "call" to an older Sim to pick them up randomly often keeping them from doing their user directed things. Now that does annoy me, especially when it happens and the kid is perfectly at max everything and really didn't need to bother anyone. It is funny (and maybe even a bit creepy) how it will over-ride all other actions at times. It took me a long time of game play to finally realize I need to check the toddler when a sim wanders away in the middle of a user directed command. How many times would I talk to the screen and say "Where the heck are you going? I told you to go cook supper?!" and they just go pick up the brat and stand there and the kid needed nothing really.

Toddlers can't go down stairs but they can be made to use the air elevator tubes from ITF. They look funny doing it because they stretch but arrive nicely as a toddler at the destination point.

They don't care if adults are interested in them or not. And it doesn't matter that they are not hungry, they have dry pants and they feel very happy. Toddlers will always try to chase them and it annoys me. I don't know what else to say in this case, maybe we should believe that someone will invent a mod that allows these screaming creatures to be more viable? Someone not so long ago invented a mod that allows you to control the character using the keyboard, so maybe we'll wait for some more unusual innovations.

littlelambsy wrote: ↑

June 14th, 2019, 12:05 am

They look funny doing it because they stretch

I'd like to see it, because I have no children, no ITF. Do you happen to have screenshots?

Not at the moment but next time I'm in game I'll grab one and post it.

littlelambsy, ok, I just want to see that, it doesn't matter when. This was the idea of the developers?

No, it's by setting retuner to allow toddlers to use these elevators. Pets can also use them by setting it up in retuner. If you first set retuner to show object menu true, select the pet/toddler then click on the elevator - Nraas - retuner - general - go to floor - allow species - pets/toddler true.

It was for the above reasons that I always have toddlers sleep on the ground floor. I was always getting routing problems when they sat at the top of the stairs and other sims wanted/needed to pick them up.

But I don't get the issue of sims dropping other actions to pick up my toddlers. They are always happy to do what I tell them and only interact with the toddler when directed. Maybe this has something to do with having plenty of things for the toddler to do on his/her own, like books on the floor, toys etc. But who knows with the sims, they seem to have minds of their own sometimes.