Sharla attacked Tommy one time, but it was really just that she was stressed out from having had to care for him and her lunatic parents alone for too long.

Dora had come home from work to find three screaming pre-schoolers and nobody, except David's guest Sophie Miguel, seeming to have a clue what to do with any of them. She'd taken David and the twins with her to a rental apartment, thinking Peter and Samantha could cope with just Sharla and Tommy. Shortly after Dora died, David got a call from a tearful Sharla, who just couldn't cope any more -- all her parents ever did was stand around wringing their hands and were nearly starving to death, not having the sense to eat even when Sharla cooked. So David moved back home with the twins and had his parents removed to the asylum, but Sharla was obviously badly disturbed by what she'd been through. She started throwing tantrums, and then she attacked Tommy.

Afraid for the younger ones, David called the authorities to see what could be done, and Sharla was sent to a women's hostel run by a nun in downtown Orleans. She was actually pretty happy there, since the place was quiet and well-equipped, and she was able to get a job (she was Fortune aspiration), which she couldn't in the main farming neighbourhood.

If you want to prevent them from fighting in the first place, get them an activity table as toddlers. Toddlers who don't have this tend to try interacting with each other when they are in a bad mood and hence gain a negative relationship, which once they turn to children, quickly degenerates into fighting. I believe this is only a problem with AL+ because of that Huggle interaction. The Huggle is adorable, but when toddlers are in a bad mood, they will reject it. I find this particularly common with multiple births or close together siblings because the parents are too exhausted to keep them in a good mood all the time.

If they're already kids, try having them do things together which involve objects, such as playing board games or using the activity table again.

You could make the parents encourage niceness, or influence them to perform positive interactions on each other?

If it's possible, send one to stay with grandparents or another relative, and have the kids talk on the phone. That repairs a relationship quicker than anything.

I had some more ideas on this! A thing to consider is that sim kids almost always roll wants to make a friend when they grow up. I always lock it and sometimes use it to make the kids friends with a sibling or family member. My sims at least, often continue rolling wants to make a friend until they befriend someone outside the family, unless something else pressing comes up. Either way, after making a friend, they roll a want to be best friends with that sim, then BFFs. Lock those best friend and BFF wants but don't fulfill them, and you'll have an easy way to give them an aspiration boost days later when their moods are low.

Also, if your sim kids go to school (and aren't home schooled), use homework as a way to keep up their aspirations. Instead of making the kids do it at nighttime, wait until morning. Most kids (and knowledge teens) will roll a want to do homework when they wake up, even if the homework left out isn't theirs. (Seriously, I don't how many times my sims have woken up wanting to do their siblings' homework). Lock that want for all the kids who roll it and that way everyone gets an aspiration boost--the sim doing the homework in the morning and the siblings who do homework when they come home later that day.

Finally, pets and hobbies are infamous for producing want panel spam. In normal circumstances, that could get annoying, but for you, @Florentzina, since your sims' aspirations are low all the time, it would mean that your sims would roll easy, fulfillable wants. Stick a pet in the household (especially a dog or a cat) and watch everyone become obsessesed with playing with it, teaching it a command, or wishing it had babies. Your sims might even stop fearing their loved ones are going to die and start fearing their pet will get sprayed by a skunk instead--a fear that's easier on the aspiration, too. Or you can get your sim kids involved in hobbies. Have them garden, play an instrument, or paint, etc. and they'll roll hobby wants all the time, no matter what their fears. Gardening is especially good for this; if your sim kids aren't rolling wants to talk or blog about their hobby, they'll roll wants to plant a seed, go birdwatching, take a hike, or see some rain. All those little +500 wants add up and can help get a sim back to neutral aspiration at least. Oh, and speaking of want chains, sim kids are a little like family and popularity sims, in that after they fulfill the "talk to" or "play with a relative" want, they continue rolling wants to socialize with that sim, giving you more +500 wants you can fulfill.

No. Spanking doesn't teach anything other than violence is okay. The apologizing part isn't so bad, but spanking, no.

Idk, ihate. I grew up a different way and so have a very different point of view. But since this isn't a parenting forum and therefore not the right place for a debate on spanking, can we just agree to use the disagree button for topics like this and move on?

The reason the Pleasant twins have such trouble getting along is because they have very few interests in common. Much like in The Sims 1, when two sims chat, the game randomly picks a topic of interest for them to discuss. If one sim has little or no interest in that topic, the conversation will fail and the relationship will drop. This is probably also why Brad and Tiffany Burb from Unleashed were constantly arguing. Unlike Sims 1, the Sims 2 game will sometimes pick a memory to discuss instead and memories appear to always be accepted in a chat.

The best way to fix such relationship problems is by buying one or more interest magazines (only available with Hot Date for Sims 1, available in the base game if you have Sims 2) and having one of the sims read them. This will increase the level of interest in the chosen topic and improve the chances of a successful conversation between the two characters.

http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Magazine

I've attached screenshots of the Pleasant twins' interest panels so you can see how little they have in common. Sitting them down at a chess table or forcing them to talk with each other on the phone will eventually raise their relationships with each other, but neither of those methods will fix the cause of the problem.

Oh, that's interesting. I never actually paid attention to interests.

Yes interests not matching will cause conversations to fail. But that doesn't tank relationship as much as negative/rejected interactions will, and once they're already in the negative numbers for relationship, they'll annoy/insult/fight with each other autonomously which keeps it down. Sims who are mean seem to cause more of a blow to relationship by having a poor conversation too, or perhaps they are just more likely to choose negative interactions by themselves. Also, since Free Time the interests are highly skewed meaning that sims of the same age range are likely to have at least a few interests in common.

Autonomously poor relationships IME are almost always started off by repeated interaction rejections. ACR sometimes tanks relationships like this, because one sim thinks that the other is the hottest piece of stuff, and keeps trying to woohoo them, but the recipient has already fallen in love with someone else and so keeps rejecting them because they are not their One Sim. Woohoo rejection is especially tough on a relationship, but even things like hug or joke or admire being rejected will hurt the offering sim and harm the relationship. Of course ACR shouldn't be affecting siblings, but it's just another example of the same phenomenon. When sims are in a low mood or low aspiration, they're much more likely to reject interactions from other sims, and kids are pretty social and don't have that many items which pull them away or fulfil social like adults do (Adults tend to autonomously write in their diaries if you have FT) so kids will often try to force interactions on other sims, including each other. When the recipient of the interaction has a low mood or low aspiration, they'll reject it, and if their relationship was low in the first place, this can push it down into the territory where autonomous negative interactions become possible, meaning insta-enemy territory appears!

The only exception I had to this was an alien sim I created to be 100% grouchy in a base game, uni + NL only setup. Even when I was trying to make her make friends, she alienated almost everyone. (Pun not intended!) The only sim she got on with was also grouchy. He thought it was hilarious when they disagreed. It shaped my view of what the nice/grouchy bar really represents - Nice really means something more like "sensitive flower", whereas Grouchy just means "enjoys a robust debate". They don't mix well because the grouchy sims see arguments as a kind of bonding sport whereas Nice sims just feel completely attacked out of nowhere, poor things! Grouchy sims also tend to play Punch U, Punch Me much harder than non-grouchy sims enjoy.

(I miss that hood. I wish I could get AGS working with UC or the discs working with W10.)

The Lazy Duchess has a mod that runs 2 through a new icon. It's the only thing that worked for my laptop. My desktop runs 2 out the box, but my neither laptop of mine will. Anyway, her mod is called Sims2RPC.
Good luck!

Thank you - it wasn't Sims 2 I was having trouble running, but AnyGameStarter. In 2017 it wasn't updated to work with the Ultimate Collection, but it is now.

However I have never managed to get that working either, for some reason my computer just does not behave like the tutorial says it should. But it is moot, because I lost the backup for the hood that I missed anyway when one of my hard drives died.