How ‘The Sims 4’ Helped Me Have The Sex Talk With My Kids

As a certified millennial who grew up playing The Sims on an ancient desktop until 3 in the morning every weekend, I couldn’t wait for my kids to enter the world of the Goth family, simoleons, and the panic of trying to get your Sim to pee when their uncomfortable bar is dark red and yet they’d rather look at the fish in the aquarium. (That you bought with the motherlode cheat code.)

But my oldest, now 11, asked me about The Sims when she was much younger, and I was nervous. I knew the game was rated T for teen, and I felt a little unsure about having her play a game where my friends and I used most of our hormonal energy creating Sims that looked like our crushes — and then having them make out and “WooHoo” on their first dates.

She, of course, just wanted to create families and build houses. But by the time she was around 9 and we had already had a sex talk or two, I watched her create Sims and build their digital relationships to the point of having them make babies. She knew how babies were made, and to her, it was just a biological act she got to replicate in a game. No different from the wildlife games she plays, where she smashes a button titled “BREED” and creates new baby wolf pups.

But one day while playing, I watched her click on a Sim to interact with, and she took notice of the option to “WooHoo”… without making a baby. “Ha!” she said. “Why would the Sims do the ‘WooHoo’ thing if they aren’t going to make a baby?”

And that’s how The Sims 4 opened up a whole new level of the sex talk for me and my tween.

My husband and I have never shied away from talking about sex with our kids — in age-appropriate ways, of course. We have three daughters, and since they were young, they’ve known the power they have over their own bodies, they know what it means to honor someone else’s choices with their body, and they know the actual names for private parts and what sex actually is.

But it’s still a tricky conversation to have. You want to give them the information they need to feel secure and to be safe — knowledge is power — but you also don’t want to overwhelm them or give them anything unnecessary to worry about. (Or, worse, share with their friends whose parents maybe aren’t comfortable with that kind of talk yet.)

The Sims 4 surprisingly made it easy for me. As soon as my daughter pointed out the option to WooHoo without having a baby, we eased right into a conversation. “Well, sex isn’t just for having babies,” I told her. “Sometimes people like to WooHoo just because they want to with that person.”

She nodded, but needed more clarification. “But you can’t just decide to have a baby in The Sims without WooHoo, right?”

We talked about adoption, about IVF, about all the ways people can have babies without sex. And then that talk led into a whole conversation about how sex without the desire to get pregnant is completely normal and good, but that having sex means there’s always a risk of getting pregnant. “So you don’t have to want a baby to WooHoo, but there’s always a chance you could have a baby if you WooHoo,” she said. “Got it.”

I felt like I’d gotten away with something. How was it this easy? Why was I always a little panicked — despite knowing I wanted to have these open conversations with my kid — about this subject?

I felt so good about the conversation we’d had, but then something started buzzing around in my brain and I couldn’t stop. My kid already knew what abortion was, so I used our Sims talk as a platform to bring it up again. I told her that because there’s always a chance of pregnancy with sex, sometimes people end up with pregnancies they weren’t ready for or didn’t want. We talked about protection, about how the fear of pregnancy sometimes stops people from having sex, but that if they wanted to, there are things they could do to prevent it.

Which, naturally, led to a deeper conversation about consent. And about people having babies even if they aren’t married. All things she knew already, but watching it play out on The Sims — how even choosing to “WooHoo” with another Sim means asking them for permission first — really seemed to solidify it for her.

At the end of our hour-long Sims gameplay, where I was left with an unfinished house but a Sim who had career aspirations and spent a lot of time racking up cooking skills in the kitchen (she burns a lot of stuff still), I also had a tween daughter who knew way more about sex — and in the best way.

I fully believe these conversations would’ve happened without The Sims 4. I wanted these conversations to happen, but having them occur so organically, as we laughed at some of the outfit choices and debated adopting a cat for our Sims family, felt so good. It reminded me of so many important conversations I had with her as a toddler, like splashing in the bathtub and reminding her that her body is her body. Or giving her a pep talk as I did her hair for Thanksgiving so that she would remember to tell family members if she didn’t want to give them a kiss.

Just tiny little moments — never making a big huge lecture or deal out of any of it, never frightening her with information — that weave their way into her core self so she feels secure, loved, and safe.

Because no matter how you feel about abortion or premarital sex or little kids knowing what actually happens when you have a baby, the truth is that the more our kids know, the safer they are. When sex isn’t some big, scary thing floating in the air, a word we shut down as soon as we hear it, an act they’re never allowed to know about or speak of, it becomes just a normal, everyday part of life.

I mean, even the Sims do it.