A note about aging

I have just finished going through everyone's profiles and adding in their actual ages (as opposed to just life stages). I may well revise again, because the way I have it now still looks a little messy, due to my torrid love affair with parentheses, but I wanted to at least get the numbers up.

I have revised the way my Sims age, which has also affected when they'll go to college and how long they stay teens so I wanted to explain everything here, to limit confusion. I'm still not completely confident about it (particularly with the teens who don't go to college), but I'm going to give it a go. As with everything in Sullivan, this is a work in progress.

Babies will now be babies for just one day, to represent one year. Toddlers will still have four days, representing ages 1-4 and children will still have 8 days, representing ages 4-12.

A lot of bloggers edit the Teen stage to 8 days (when a Sim teen turns 18) and I considered doing the same. However, my rounds are 5 days long and any teen who reaches college age in that round goes off to college at the end. 8 days wasn't working for me because I would then face the problem of having to send a teen to college in the middle of the round, which I hate doing.

The only solution I've found to my problem is to leave the Teen stage as is (15 days) and send the teens to college at the end of the round in which they turn 18. That may mean some teens go at 18 and that some go at 22, so I've devised a way of dealing with that too.

If a teen goes to college at 18, they'll arrive back in the hood after graduation at the age of 23. If I send a teen at 22, they'll still be 23 when they come back. I can't have that. Instead, I will adjust their ages so that they're the same number of years apart as they were pre-college.

Example: by Day 65, Magdalena will be 19 and Araminta will be 20. At this time, they'll both go off to college and return on Day 70. They'll arrive back in Sullivan with 39 days left in their age stage but I will take one day off Magdalena and 2 days off Araminta. This means Araminta will still be one year older than Magdalena and 12 years older than her little sister Zelda.

I'm trying to avoid situations like I have with the Moretti kids right now. Arianna and Caterina are twins, so they're the same age, but little brother Filippo is also the same age, and he shouldn't be. I'm not going to go back and fix those indiscrepancies (there's weird aging stuff with the Sacha Lachance's kids too) but from now on, I will be much more meticulous with it.

So to summarise, the Adult age stage will last for 39 days only if the Sim goes to college at exactly 18. Otherwise, I'll shave up to 5 days off to ensure age differences are kept in sync.

Anyway, this has probably confused you all but I wanted to at least attempt to explain what I'm doing with the aging situation in Sullivan. Age differences not staying the same throughout my Sims' lifespans has long bothered me, and I'm excited to finally have a way to deal with it.