How do you trigger Full Parental Mode?

[CGrant56]

Ok, I'm confused.  It's my normal state I'll admit but I had something happen in my game today that leaves me totally confused about one of the milestones in the Super Parent aspiration that came with Parenthood.  

I've had Parenthood since nearly the day it was released and in all the time since I have not been able to complete the Super Parent aspiration with any sim because I haven't been able to figure out how a sim gets into Full Parental Mode.  Doing searches on different places, I haven't really been able to find anything more than a general discussion that it was there for the most part but nothing really that told me how to trigger it.  I always thought it was some sort of social option you got when interacting with the kids but I never got it to show up.  I chalked it up to how I handle toddlers and children.  To be honest, those two age groups are not my favorite thing in the game by any means but because having the traits those age groups give can really make a difference later on in their life, so I always grit my teeth, cheat the heck out of their motives and keep them going 24/7 until they complete their aspirations and for a child, max the 17 possible skills and age them up as fast as can.  For kids, I always mentor the skills that you can just to speed the process up and use objects (Video Station) where a couple of skills can be worked on together (Media Production and Charisma).

But today, one of my sims actually achieved Full Parental Mode for the first time ever and completed the milestone and I have absolutely no idea why.  Not a clue.

I had the dad, mentoring one of the boys who was working on the creativity milestone to play a musical instrument for 5 hours.  When the milestone completed on the child I just left it going since it was nearly time to go to school just to add a little more progress on the skill.  Dad did have the Super Parent aspiration as his active aspiration so I guess that is one of those aspirations that have to be active to complete certain milestones so I learned that much anyway.  Once the kid took off for school, I was surprised when I switched back to the dad that the milestone was completed.  The only thing he did was mentor the child on the pipe organ.  Is it really that easy and I've just been missing it all this time??  Is that all it takes?  And are there other ways to get to Full Parental Mode.  How does it show up?  I didn't see any new buffs but I might have missed that.

So I would really appreciate any insight anyone can give me on this one.

BTW, I'm fairly new here and still trying to learn the ropes so if this is not the type of post appropriate for this section of AHQ, please tell me and I won't do it again.

[DMDragonCT · Accepted solution]

@CGrant56 Oh, that's a tricky one, I agree. Now, I do believe that the only prerequisite that is required for full parental mode is having parenting skill maxed at 10. Once you have that, it should get triggered when performing several parenting interactions in a row. Those include encourage, influence, discipline, force among others. The precise number of those interaction is unknown to me, but the parent usually starts to "sparkle" at around 5 or more. The sim does not need to have any family aspiration active for it to work either. What I didn't know is that it might be triggered by a timed interaction, like mentoring. Did you by any chance perform any other parenting interactions before mentoring? Because I've never seen it happen just from mentoring, unless you do that like five times in a row.

An easy way to trigger full parent mode consistently is when teaching a sim about saying Thank You or Sorry. Just before the interaction finishes, the "Encourage Learning about Thank You/Sorry" appears and it can be queued at this precise point in time! I'm sure it's an exploit as it should only be available once, but to be honest, those values rise so slowly that I often just queue the living hell out of it. Doing that will always trigger full parent mode without fail, provided that you have parenting skill 10, of course. I hope this helps!

Now, on a personal note, you honestly fooled me, because I thought you were an old, established name here. I find your posts well-written stemming from a solid knowledge base and I always enjoy reading them. What I will say, and I hope you forgive my candor, is that I'm a bit uneasy about your given XPs. I'm rather new here myself and in the beginning I only gave XP to posts that actually taught me something new. But that's apparently not what XP are really for it seems. They are more similar to a simple "Like" on other forums. I found that a whole bunch of badges here only become unlocked when the number of given XP is exactly equal to the number of received XP. Since then, I've been giving them out a lot more frequently, and in doing so, have received many more in return. This is, of course, a personal choice and you should give them at your discretion. I do however often refuse XP to posts from members with an abysmal ratio of given to received points. But hey, that's just me, my opinion and observation so please don't hang me for it, and like I said, please use them at your own discretion. 

Happy Simming!

[DMDragonCT · Accepted solution]

@CGrant56 Oh, that's a tricky one, I agree. Now, I do believe that the only prerequisite that is required for full parental mode is having parenting skill maxed at 10. Once you have that, it should get triggered when performing several parenting interactions in a row. Those include encourage, influence, discipline, force among others. The precise number of those interaction is unknown to me, but the parent usually starts to "sparkle" at around 5 or more. The sim does not need to have any family aspiration active for it to work either. What I didn't know is that it might be triggered by a timed interaction, like mentoring. Did you by any chance perform any other parenting interactions before mentoring? Because I've never seen it happen just from mentoring, unless you do that like five times in a row.

An easy way to trigger full parent mode consistently is when teaching a sim about saying Thank You or Sorry. Just before the interaction finishes, the "Encourage Learning about Thank You/Sorry" appears and it can be queued at this precise point in time! I'm sure it's an exploit as it should only be available once, but to be honest, those values rise so slowly that I often just queue the living hell out of it. Doing that will always trigger full parent mode without fail, provided that you have parenting skill 10, of course. I hope this helps!

Now, on a personal note, you honestly fooled me, because I thought you were an old, established name here. I find your posts well-written stemming from a solid knowledge base and I always enjoy reading them. What I will say, and I hope you forgive my candor, is that I'm a bit uneasy about your given XPs. I'm rather new here myself and in the beginning I only gave XP to posts that actually taught me something new. But that's apparently not what XP are really for it seems. They are more similar to a simple "Like" on other forums. I found that a whole bunch of badges here only become unlocked when the number of given XP is exactly equal to the number of received XP. Since then, I've been giving them out a lot more frequently, and in doing so, have received many more in return. This is, of course, a personal choice and you should give them at your discretion. I do however often refuse XP to posts from members with an abysmal ratio of given to received points. But hey, that's just me, my opinion and observation so please don't hang me for it, and like I said, please use them at your own discretion. 

Happy Simming!

[CGrant56]

@DMDragonCT  Thank you so much for the help.  I really appreciate it.

I think I know why it triggered then.  What actually happened was dad was mentoring one boy on the pipe organ while one of the other boys was playing video games on the TV and game console 3 or 4 tiles away in the same room.  Dad kept quitting mentoring and kept trying to join the video game and I kept canceling and sending him back to mentor.  It was so bad that I finally had the second boy quit the video game and go play chess because dad wouldn't stop quitting mentoring and it had to have been more that 5 times that it happened.  

As to the other.  Thank you for the compliment.  Much appreciated.  I've been here since I started playing Sims 4 which was very shortly after it was released in 2014.  Same at the main site.  Though I only came here when I had a problem and pretty much just lurked for most of that time.  But I have a problem in my game right now that started back late last year and I've been trying to find a solution for which I still haven't and so I came back here and have been systematically going though posts here hoping to find some clue on how to fix it.  One thing I do have to say is that there are a lot of posts here, wow.  To be honest, I'm sort of haunting the place recently and spent more time here than playing the game.  I have an idea that it's going to take what is essentially a nuclear option to fix it and I really don't want to mess up a nearly 3 year old save that I have put 1,000s of hours into and start over again if I can avoid it.  

While doing that, I came across some posts that hadn't been answered about some of the same problems I have had over the years and figured out or found a solution for and already fixed in my game and said to myself that "I know how to fix that" and so I made my first posts here with a bit of trepidation I admit, and have continued doing so when I think I can help somebody and I feel more confident and like doing it now that I finally figured out how to do it.  I only figured out how to edit my own posts just last week believe it or not.  Didn't ever think to try to click on the 3 little dots until I happened to mouse over them and the menu popped up.  Thought they were just part of the site graphics.  And there are some things about the site that I am still wondering about.  

So thank you for the candor and the info about the XP system.  That is much appreciated because I've never been on a site that has anything like it and have been wondering how I was supposed to use XP.  And I really haven't figured out who I should ask about it.  I read all the info that's available but that really didn't tell me much about what I call the "site etiquette" i.e. how things really work, the unwritten rules so to speak.  I've been giving them to posts I found useful or told me things I didn't know and to anyone who replied to mine or mentioned me and I have noticed the balance between what I'd been giving vs getting was a bit off already and have been trying to give more than I have earlier now that I think I'm getting the hang of things.  But to be honest, I don't really care about badges and getting XP myself.  I don't post for that reason.  It's because I want to help, where and when I can, when I know, or in some cases, think I know (been wrong a few times if you look at some my posts) that I can help other players, particularly the folks that are just starting to play the game.  But I do want to be polite and not offend people or get them upset at me.  So I want the moderators or major players here to tell me when I do something wrong or get in the way.  And if I post something that is absolutely wrong, correct me.  I do not mind that at all if done in a positive way without taking my head off.  I do want to be welcome here.  

BTW, just how do you look up who has given you XP?  The directions said to open the message page and you could get a list of all who have given XP or either a post of the thread.  I can't figure out how.  I do get the emails but I'd like to look and see a list here rather than looking in my email at each one individually.  I have seen a notice that I got kudos in a little pop up while I'm here but otherwise I can't tell who is doing it and I would like to know if there is someway to thank them. 

And I think I've figured this out now, but is the site time set on GMT?

Anyway, @DMDragonCT thank you for replying to my questions and being candid with me.  It is truly appreciated.

[DMDragonCT]

@CGrant56 Everything you just wrote could be applied to myself! Which is totally freaky, in a great and unexpected way. I was worried that my candor would explode in my face, so reading your absolutely lovely response gave me a huge sigh of relief.

As for the XP, just click on the number right next to the XP, which leads you to that list of contributors. I had the same experience as you when reading those instructions for it. I just didn't get it, and to be fair to the both of us, those instructions seem to be out-dated and using obsolete terminology. Someone should definitely be update them. I figured it out eventually by complete accident when I misclicked and hit the number counter...

For me it was fellow members like PugLove888, SheriGR, EphorialQueen and RandomBuzziness that got me into rethinking my own use of XP. Those four have to be some of the kindest souls in all of creation! Not to mention their genius and enthusiasm for the game. I used to be active over on the sims forums, but the constant and never-ending Sims 4 bashing got on my nerves. I just don't get people who continuously spread negativity about their so-called "favorite game". I mean, sure there's room for improvement, but I also understand that this is the most mind-blowing game ever created. It's as close as we currently are to a holo-deck from Star Trek TNG or a personal mini-version of the Matrix. This game does not have any real competition for a good and simple reason: It's just too difficult and time-consuming to do. Too bad very few players can wrap their heads around this fact. Ok, I'm obviously drifting right now... sorry.

Your explanation of why the mentoring triggered the full parental mode when repeatedly canceled and restarted makes total sense. I guess you've discovered another little exploit there. Nice!

As I said, your post really resonated with me as I also play in random rotation on a single save file that is by now ancient and massive. As a "rotational perfect world player" I couldn't imagine playing any other way, or ever hitting that "Start New Game" button. Utterly inconceivable! Now, you mentioned that you have an unresolved issue with your save file. Since you didn't state it, you may mind doing so. If that's the case, then please don't hesitate to send me a direct message. We might be able to figure out something together.

I thoroughly enjoyed this correspondence and look forward to any future encounters!

Best Regards and Happy Simming!

[puzzlezaddict]

@CGrant56 and @DMDragonCT  I just wanted to pop in and say a few things:

• This thread is totally fine here, and definitely fits in with the purpose of this particular section.
• To change the time zone the site uses for timestamps, click your username in the upper right corner, then Settings, then Preferences; the setting is under Preference Options (the first category).
• There are a number of other settings you can tweak as well, for example under subscriptions & notifications > notification settings, where you can decide which emails you want to receive from the site.

As for XP, it doesn't have any real purpose, which is to say it can be whatever you make of it.  Badges don't mean anything either, XP-related or otherwise.  We probably each use XP for a slightly different collection of reasons, and that's fine.  So while there may be common practices in one forum or another, there's no real right answer, and you're not committing a faux pas if you don't XP a given post.

[DMDragonCT]

@puzzlezaddict Thank you for the information. But why is it that your post is leaving me feel chastised?

You wrote, "As for XP, it doesn't have any real purpose, which is to say it can be whatever you make of it."

However, in the Welcome to the Sims Section of AHQ by crinrict the following can be found under the section XP and Solutions: "When you see a helpful post, you can use the 'XP' button to give experience points to the user who wrote it. It's an easy way of saying 'thank you' to the author and help them level up in the community."

One of these two statements is therefore false. They cannot both be true.

[puzzlezaddict]

@DMDragonCT  I didn't mean to make you feel chastised—I was just saying you can use it however you see fit, since there's no particularly important use for XP.  Yes, earning XP will help people "level up"; so will granting XP, and having solutions accepted.   But most of the ranks themselves don't really matter other than their meaning to the people who have them.  So if someone wants to have a higher rank, then I'm sure XP is appreciated, but that higher rank won't have any practical impact.

That's the long way of saying, grant XP how and when you want, it's not a big deal what approach you choose.

[CGrant56]

For some reason, my original reply keeps getting marked as spam and although it appears to post, when I come back it is gone.  1st time that happened to me here.  Anyway,  Maybe this one will stick.

@puzzlezaddict  Thank you for the clarification and information about site options and navigating to them.  From my recent activity and watching who is answering what, I've think I've got a handle on getting around more or less, finding the type of information I'm looking for and who the moderation staff are from the titles under the avatars and the gold and silver stars now that I understand how the site works a bit better.  But this site is a little different than most I've been active on in the past and any information anyone can provide on using it is appreciated.

@DMDragonCT Again thanks for your help.  I will PM you soon about the problem I'm trying to fix in my game.  Might be a day or two though.  If you want to take a look in a post under the ROM section that mentions necrocall and dedeathify, I already posted most of it there.  And also in another asking about what is supposed to happen to urns when dedeathify is used in this section.  Sorry for no links.  I still keep messing up inserting links somehow.  Sooner or later I'll get that down too.  Thanks for bearing with me and I certainly do appreciate your offer to help.

[SheriGR]

@DMDragonCT Thank you for your kind and generous comments. You made my day!! It's wonderful to find a way to help others in a game that you love, imperfect as that can be at times in my case! I've played Sims 1, 2, & 3 also (and I think I could safely say I was rather addicted to 2 - though 3 quickly fixed that. I never had the love for 3.). But... once I discovered 4 I was hooked all over again. And exactly on the thousands of hours thing!  (My solution? I take a groups of my sims with me to the new saves. And we play somewhat in the upside down.)

Anyway.... I won't get started down the rabbit hole. I just wanted to thank you for your kindness. 

[PugLove888]

@CGrant56, @DMDragonCT , thank you for your kind words and your willingness to help other players with their problems.!  That is how many of us start off here -- we had a problem ourselves and then stayed on to learn more about the game and help out where we could!   I know that @SheriGR  feels the same way! 

I have had full parental mode before, but I don't remember how I got into that zone other than having maxed my Sim's Parenting skill.  I first noticed it when my during my testing of Alien/Vampire hybrids!   My Vampire mom Sim had twin boys with her Alien husband.  They had had 2 other children prior to that, so while tending the twins, I noticed full parental mode, but I can't remember if she was mentoring the older children before this or not.   I was paying more attention to the genetics and how they played out in the offspring and wasn't monitoring other skills or their effects that closely. 

@CGrant56, are you trying to use the Link Button next to the Emoji button? I never use the link button!   Are you on a Mac or a PC?   I don't know about on a Mac, but on my PC, I just right-click on the web address to highlight it and then I just do the usual Copy and Paste commands and it usually works, copying the highlighted text and then in another window where I have this site set to type a Reply, I just paste it in the reply box with the rest of my text.