The Well-Rounded Family Challenge
CREDIT: Misskinny @ Mod The Sims on April 19, 2015
What Is The Well-Rounded Family Challenge?
Create a well-rounded family and live life to the fullest! Try to avoid having child services called (this will result in an immediate loss according to the original challenge scoring sheet). Your challenge ends when all Young Adults return from college and move out leaving your adult/elder Sims alone.
DISCLAIMER: Misskinny DID NOT create this original challenge. It is originally a Sims 3 challenge, I have just adapted it for The Sims 4. The original post can be found here. There have also been updates added based on a comment from simraria since they seem to improve the challenge and make it more coherent.
Setting Up
Create a Mother and Father
You may add extra family member (Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, Etc.) If you wish, but you don't have too.
Give the Parents good traits, such as Family Oriented, to show a positive example to the child.
Once this is completed, move out any extra family members and pick a regular starter home with AT LEAST 2 beds.
(Tip: You may want to start on an empty lot, and get a simple home from the exchange. You may use money cheats for this, as long as it doesn't go over 100,000)
After that, give your family $3,000 (Easy) or $1,000 (Hard)
After this is completed, adopt a baby of your choosing. You may, if want to, use the cheat (TestingCheats on) cas.fulleditmode once the child ages up.
General Rules
The Mom will be a stay at home mother, the only way she can make money is writing novels, gardening, etc.
Dad MUST have a job, doesn't matter which one, but you can't follow him to work if you choose one from the Get To Work expansion pack, you must send him alone.
Kids and Teens MUST go to school. NO vacation days.
And please, no money or motive cheats
Having More Kids
The mother may have another child, but only one. And it has to be before the original child is a teenager.
Birthdays
They are a big deal. Throw your children a party each time they age up. Get them a present, cake, and invite a friend over.
Date Night
Choose one night a week that will be Mom and Dad's date night. They may hire a babysitter for this occasion. What they do on their date is up to you.
Mom’s Time
Mom needs a day where she can take a few hours off to have some “me” time. Hire a babysitter or leave the kids with dad while she does whatever you like. Make this once a week. You have to follow her on this occasion, not just send her and take care of the kids with the dad.
Dad’s Time
Dad gets one day a week for himself. He can choose to do what he likes in his spare time on that day. Use it to see a friend, or whatever you like. All other days he must come straight home from work.
Sunday
Sunday is family day. This day must be spent out of the home doing something fun. Take the family fishing, to the park for a picnic or bbq, visit the grandparents or anything you like. Also, if you are home for dinner, make it a very special dinner, don't just make a microwaved meal.
Simraria Updates From Comment
Comment can be found here made on June 28, 2016 by simraria to improve the guide above using more specifics:
I fell in love with this challenge but it felt almost as plastic as Barbie and Ken, so I modified it and posted the update to my simblr but below are the changes I have made and within the (parenthesis) I explain why I modified the original challenge if possible.
Mentioned Sim's lifespan, stating it can be set to any option but aging must be on.
Families may start out with $3,000-$5,000 and their homes may be purchased with up to $135,000 obtained via money cheats. (The option to pick a number between $3,000 - $5,000 allows players some extra money for renovations or appliances for their homes to increase productivity and is still realistic as many people have a savings account. $135,000 is a more realistic price as many starter homes cost at least this or lower and many people take out loans and mortgages to afford houses.)
Removed genders from Sim creation (ie. create a Mother and Father) - also tried to keep genders out of the challenge and replaced Mom's Time and Dad's Time with Alone Time - Stay at home Parent and Full time job Parent. (For families that are father and father and mother and mother!)
Parental Sims may make a baby or adopt a baby. In addition, I completely changed 'Having More Children' by introducing a minimum timespan between children as pediatricians recommended such a timespan before attempting relations after my son was born. The modified text is: You are able to have another child or adopt another child two weeks after the original child is born. If you have a second child and wish to have a third child, the same rule applies: must wait two weeks after the second child is born. This is the minimum amount of time between children. There are no limitations on the maximum amount of time between children. (There are people who get pregnant very quickly after their first child is born, so I added a minimum amount of time based on pediatrician recommendations from when I was in the hospital when my son was born. Plus, two weeks may not be enough recovery time for some people depending on their birth method such as a c-section may take six weeks recovery time while a natural birth is two weeks.)
Families may take one vacation a year, free or not. (I have gone many years without a vacation growing up but we did take "vacations" in which my full time job Parent had a week off of work.)
Children must go to school but teenagers are not required. There is an option for teens to drop out and get job(s) but they must earn their in-game GED diploma to graduate high school.
Modified Birthdays, mentioning that until children reach the young adult stage, birthdays require a party with present(s) and cake but inviting friends over is optional. (I did not have many friends growing up and growing up in a small town did not help so I removed the requirement of inviting people over.)
Changed the Date Night requirement to one night every two weeks rather than once a week. (I'm a parent and I am lucky if I get a date night once a month.)
I also introduced optional challenges and they are as follow:
Working Class
In this economy, sometimes both parents have to work which makes raising a child or children more difficult. It is required that at least one parent works a full time job but this optional challenge will require that both parents work. However, you can choose whether the second parent works a full time job or a part time job. If you have created relatives for the family, you may move them in to take care of the child or children while the parents work, hire a babysitter, or send the child/children to daycare if they are young enough.
Note: a glitch occurs when both parents work and there are multiple children. A child who attends school and a child that attends daycare will come home as soon as the oldest child arrives home from school. The child will not be able to take care of the youngest child due to the games programming so a temporary fix would to be to send the oldest child to the park. This will send the youngest child back to the daycare until the oldest child returns home or a parent returns home from work.
Extramarital Affair
Most relationships are ruined by illicit romantic or sexual relationships but these relationships occur for many different reasons. Some reasons are: getting married too early, getting married for the wrong reason, inability to deal with change (such as grief), becoming a parent, physical dissatisfaction, emotional disconnect, disagreements on core values, differing life priorities, no common interests, need for excitement, personal finances, and career advancement. It is your decision whether or not your Sims discuss the affair or hide it until they are caught and are forced to discuss it. Then it is your decision to have the parental Sims divorce or attempt to work it out.
Divorce
If your relationship with your parental Sims starts to take a turn for the worst, you may divorce them or seek marriage counseling that ultimately may lead to divorce anyway. Divorced parental Sims must live in separate houses and may live in separate neighborhoods or worlds. They must also share custody of the children in some way such as second parent has weekends, every other weekend, or battle for custody (possibly not an option in game but an option in storytelling). Parental Sims may seek out new romantic partners during and after divorcing.
Widowed
It is possible for one of your parental Sims to die during the challenge, this will add a degree of difficulty to the challenge as the widowed Sim must assume both roles while grieving and or moving on. If your Sim does move on, they should be introduced as the stepparent and continue on as normal. It is your decision whether to force them to become the stay at home parent or the full time job parent.
I included secondary challenges that I thought would work well with the challenge, all found on MTS.
Selfacy, create yourself as a sim and your partner as the founder's (parents) of the children.
Single Parent, want to take the challenge to the next level? Try being a single parent. A similar challenge is "Single Dads Searching" by ThinkingWithPortals101.
Close Knit, a challenge by letitgo1776 adds another level of difficulty to the challenge if you wish to partake in multiple challenges at once.
The "Perfect" Housewife Challenge by QueenAaliyah can be adapted into any gender.
Finally, I included challenge resources to help in the creation of Sims, links outside of MTS.
Random Name Generator by Behind the Name, randomly generates first and middle names with the option of two and three middle names for all genders with surnames if necessary in many different categories (nationality, mythological, fantasy and more).
The Sims 4 Random Trait and Aspiration Generator, randomly generate traits and aspirations for your sims.
Sims 4 Random Legacy Challenge Generator, created by tigger89 randomly generates attributes for sims such as marital status, number of children, primary and secondary careers, generational goal, midlife crisis, and miscellaneous.
Sim Generator for the Sims 4, randomly generates gender, hair color, eye color, and fashion style as well as traits, aspiration and career path.
