I hear a lot of people have problems with babysitters in the game being negligent. I usually avoid them as much as possible, and if both the baby's parents have to work at the same time, I always make sure the baby's needs are high before they leave and there's enough time for one of the parents to leave work early and rush home in an emergency.

Who else has problems with negligent babysitters?

I do! I do!
Seriously. The worst babysitters never even enter the house; recently I had one who was stuck halfway down the street, so my baby was really just left alone, starving in his stinky diaper.
Sometimes I'll get a competent babysitter. I've gotten a few that had the family oriented trait and they will autonomously take care of the kid. But a lot of them sit around reading your books or watching your TV, ignoring your kid even when the hunger, social or energy needs are in the red.

In my experience, the babysitters in Appaloosa Plains are really good. My toddler became friends with one of them after two days because he constantly played with the toddler, changed his diaper, fed him, etc. I was so happy.

Sunset Valley sucks though. They just stand outside and let the baby starve and stink and wail. I make sure to beat the crap out of them if they don't do their job right.

The babysitting coding is terrible. I have to keep firing them until I come across one that is good with them, then I feel OK. I hate most of them, sometimes try to kill them off.

When i made a mod for my personal use to have the possibility to call the babysitter anytime i wanted and to be able to cancel it also, i saw that in the XML there's options to "tweak" there beahavior, i didn't play with the settings much though.
What i'm saying here i belive it's easy to "change" how they behave if one wanto look into that.

I've had like 2 good babysitters in the 3 years I've been playing. I started to wonder if it was some story progression thing - because what usually happens is the babysitter stands around - sometimes on the porch, sometimes in the same room with the hungry, smelly sim infant or toddler, - until an adult sim has headed home at which time the babysitter changes the diaper and gives a bottle.
Maybe if you fire the bad ones, you'll eventually get a decent one?

Never had a good babysitter. In fact, just last night my doctor sim got called in late in the night so they had to call in a babysitter. The sitter actually LEFT midway though my sims shift.
Thankfully the game asks you to call a replacement but I was still rather annoyed by that, especially since you had to pay for both of them.

Hm, from my experience there is not really a difference between the individual babysitters. They're all as good or bad as every other when it comes to their basic babysitter duties.
The default babysitters in Lunar Lakes, for example, have no traits, like every other service NPC there, and did their job just like the ones that come with Sunset Valley.
Success, I think, depends on the processing power of your hardware. I've changed my gaming environment three times since the release of TS3 and the better my system got the better the service NPCs became.
It's a matter of whether you keep them in high detail by focussing your camera on them or not, and if you keep them in low detail and have a weaker system this will almost completely stop all autonomy they may have.
It's the same with maids. When my camera stays focussed on my lot she'll make the beds, when I leave the house and focus on my Sims that are somewhere else, she'll leave without having made the beds.
Mind you, this only from my personal experience. I went from playing Sims on Mac which runs inside an emulator, to Windows native, to a dedicated gaming PC and my service staff got better and better with every improvement of my system. Now they sometimes even do the things they are supposed to do when I'm not looking, while initially I had to glue my camera to them and do nothing else but watch them.

You can tweak them a bit by changing their traits though. I noticed this when playing kiwi_tea's Riverblossom Hills. There is an amazing babysitter that did more than is usually expected from them. She played with my toddler, emptied the potty, cleaned the dishes and took out the trash. Even on the weak machine. But her traits were different from the usual settings. She was, I think, a Snob, Childish and Neat and acted like a second maid. I added Perfectionist and she became even better. But only when I kept my camera focussed on my home lot.

I began to make use of this after a while by both changing their traits and develop a "babysitter" playstyle. Before my Sims leave I make sure that my toddlers are in their greens and either asleep or occupied with something (not autonomously but by my order, because autonomous behaviour is likely to be interrupted by other Sims, i.e. the babysitter). After that I do not focus back on my house. The babysitter will stay inert and not disturb my toddlers. But I monitor their motives and when I notice one of them decreasing I focus back on my home lot and now, with the better system, the babysitter acts within 2-3 seconds.
The only thing that needs changing in my opinion is that the motive threshold that prompts the sitters to act is too low. I think it is lower than the one that prompts a butler to prepare a meal. But I guess this can be modded.

I had a similar problem at one point when both the parent sims were at a party, then the replacement didn't even enter the house.

I've never had one that's even come into the house. They always just stand on the front porch rocking back and forth on their heels until I come back, when they take my money and run.

I've had one good babysitter, way back when. He was really adorable with them. All the other ones have been awful. I've been modifying them to give them the family oriented and nurturing traits to try to give it a boost.

I hope the coding for Bonehilda will be better, because my babysitters suck too. I found though if you focus on them, they will do something. But if you're focused on the sim outside of the home, then they'll let your kid starve and be wet.

At least the EA sitters are at worst negligent. They don't enter your simhouse, shake the infants, stick the toddlers in a tub of scalding water, beat the kids, and molest the teens.

Just like the nannies of TS2, I hate the babysitters of TS3. I've gone back to creating my Nanny family (3 elder ladies) and put them in a house making sure 1 of them always stays in the house while the other 2 go on "assignment" taking care of babies/toddlers. When the baby/toddler ages up to child or teen (depending on parent's schedules) I move Nanny back to the Nanny house. My sims are so much happier now.

What do you resort to when the elder ladies die? This sounds great, something I don't mind trying out for my RH working families. I have most of my families with one adult working at home.

I didn't mind the Sims 2 nannies as much if they didn't burn down the house and stop fighting the parents. I would laugh that the same Nannie that raised the parent would come to raise the parent's kids. Those nasty tricks was still holding resentment in the previous generations.

That's a great idea, lisfyre! Gonna try that myself.

I play epic lifespan in my regular game, so elders work for me. In my legacy game, my Nanny family are all adults - self employed or work part time so that they spend 90% in the home taking care of the kiddies. Actually I just started a new Nanny family in my brand new game which I had to restart due to a corrupt file and I placed a mother (elder) and daughter (adult) and an aunt (elder) in a house. I had mother and aunt out in different homes being nanny and adult daughter holding the fort at home. I'm thinking she can adopt children and raise them to be nannies one day.

Of course, if you play a game with aging off, elder stage nannies shouldn't be an issue. I have a game where aging is off and so is story progression. I also have those "nannies on assignment" take part time jobs or be self employed so that they don't get too bored and help bring in some cash for my poorer families with children.

tbh its not only the babysitters, if i leave my sims on idle they only help my baby/toddler when his needs are so low that it starts to cry
Gues the same goes for the babysitter sims.

Thanks Lisfyre, that is giving me ideas.

UGH my stupid babysitters did nothing with the baby and the Social Workers almost took the dang baby away
So much for the baby, but I never liked babysitters in the Sims. I always think they are going to steal something or do a crappy job.

Ugh, even in Sims 2, they were neglectful.

In Sims 3, I havn't had much of a problem. I rarely use them. When I do, it's kind of a hit or miss, but nothing too dramatic. I've had nothing horrible, but nothing amazing either. I hate it. I love that the game randomizes it so you have either a really good or really bad babysitter (or butler, so I've heard), but obviously it's not 50/50. More like 95/5. I wish it was a little more realistic.

Good thing we'll have Bonehilda in SPN to take care of the tots. I hate the babysitters, I just make it a point to either get a grandparent to come over with the kid, drop the kid off with the grandparent, or keep a parent at home because the babysitters blow.

Hmm, leaving my infant with someone named Bonehilda just somehow seems...wrong.

No! Look at my Avatar! She's perfectly capable and very nurturing