Parents Lil Helper or Yuus & Nuuu?

When it comes to parent-child interaction in Second Life, there are two premier reward and discipline systems that parents can use to interact with their children (so long as they are using an RLV enabled viewer such as Firestorm). Those systems being Parents Lil Helper and Yuus & Nuuu.

Both systems require the child avatar to wear an invisible attachment, usually on their head, that acts as as a relay. Simply add a parent to the system and they can click your head to get a useful popup menu with various parenting options. These options differ depending on the system you're using and both system have different menus for child and parent users respectively with parents obviously having more tools and control, and while there are some differences there are also lots of similarities and really good stuff between them. I happen to own both so please read on to see which I believe is better and why!

no children were hurt in the making of this photograph

How much do they cost?

First let's discuss cost and availability. You can purchase Parents Lil Helper from Kei Folland on Second Life's Marketplace for a respectable L$600 Linden Dollars or around $2.40 US Dollars. Similarly, you can also aqquire the Yuus & Nuuu system on Marketplace for a slightly higher fee of L$750 Linden Dollars or $3.00 US Dollars (please note this was correct of 04/01/2019). This makes Parents Lil Helper the clear winner when it comes to hard earned cash spent - you can buy the system and still have change left over to go and buy yourself another outfit if you buy it instead of purchasing the Yuus and Nuuu system.

Feature - Hand Holding

So if Yuus and Nuuu doesn't win on cost, does it win anywhere else? To find out, let's analyse their features. One of the most useful features of both systems is hand holding. This is effectively where you are tethered to your parent and forced to follow them around the world. If you ask to hold someone's hand then you can also click let go whereas if your parent holds your hand there is no option to let go.

Parents Lil Helper Child menu

From the child's point of view this is a pretty nice feature. If you're in a laggy area your parent can save you and hold your hand until the lag stops. If you go AFK (away from keyboard) and your parent decides to move on to a new area then they can drag you along, so no being left behind when you come back to your keyboard.

It's also pretty useful if you're cajoled into going to a boring adult shopping store and you want to surf the net or look on Marketplace; you can ask to have your hand held and not have to worry about what's going on in game. Kind of how a real kid might get lost in their imagination while having their hand held - neat huh? Of course, the drawback is that if you're being a brat your parent can grab your hand and not let go. Again, just like they might a real kid.

Auto Teleporting

Another neat feature of both systems is auto teleporting. When activated you will automatically accept any teleport requests from your parent, this is especially useful when you're AFK. The teleport system is automatically eneabled in Parents Lil Helper the moment your parent holds your hand, while your parent will need to click the teleport button itself in Yuus & Nuuu for it to work. Parent's Lil Helper also has this button too which is useful for when you're not holding hands. It would have been nice to have both options in Yuus and Nuuu but unfortunately there is not. .

Parents Lil Helper Parent menu

Tantrum System

One area that Yuus and Nuuu thrives though is its animation and sound. The Yuus and Nuuu system has an integrated tantrum system allowing the child to show their displeasure in a number of different and fun ways. You can cry, scream about no nini or bawl about why why why???!! All accompanied by dramatic kicking and screaming whilst rolling around on the floor. This feature is especialy useful for younger children say Toddeleedoo or Babe avatars but may not be appropriate for older avatars like Tweenster or SMB, although it is a shame that Parents Lil Helper lacks some sort of feature like this. So Yuus and Nuuu hits back and scores a point!

Yuus & Nuuu Child's Tantrum menu

Carry System

Yikes! What a racket! Of course if your kid is crying their eyes out you might want to pick them up and offer them some comfort and sympathy. Thankfully both Yuus and Nuuu and Parents Lil Helper have pick up and carry systems which parents can utilize in a number of different ways. You can either carry them on either hips, up front or on your back. On a technical level both work the same way and ressurect out or 'rez' an invisible prim for the child to sit on that is positioned somewhere on the parent avatar depending on the pose. This will require you to have rez rights which means this option won't work everywhere in Second Life unlike say hand holding or auto teleporting. Take a look at the gallery below to see what sort of poses you can achieve with either system. It's a lot of fun!

There are, however, some differences in how the posing systems work. In Parents Lil Helper the child or parent will have to type /1menu and then use an XYZ adjustment menu familair to most in Second Life, while with the Yuus and Nuuu system there is an intuiative arrow system that the child can use to position themselves. The arrow system is definitely easier to use and more user friendly, while the XYZ system does allow for more precision even if it is more time consuming and harder to master.

Another thing to note is that only the child can position themselves with the Yuus and Nuuu system while the parent can help with Parents Lil Helper. This can both be a good and bad thing; sometimes you end up with a situation where both the parent and child are trying to adjust the pose and things just get messy! So it can be a double edged sword, or rattle so to speak.

YUUS & NUUU Parent menu

Rewards and Punishments

Of course a punishment and reward system wouldn't be that if you couldn't dole out incentives and sanctions. For Parents Lil Helper this takes the form of the smiley face and sad face menus, and for Yuus & Nuuu the Yuus (yes) and Nuuu (no) menus. In terms of rewards for Yuus & Nuuu this takes the form of giving out story time, game time, stickers, candy, TV time or a hug.

Punishments include soap (chat turned to .....), Binky in (puts a physical binky in and turns chat to .......), come here (forces the child to move toward you, swat (makes a spanking sound and includes green text but no animation), cover ears (turns off chat for child), cover eyes (turns screen black), timeout (this will force the child to sit and stay in mouselook for a selected amount of time), and finally ground. Grounding your child will force them to stay in a certain area for a set amount of time. This could be 5 meters, 10 meters, the parcel or the sim for whatever time you determine to be fair.

Yuus and Nuuu ground menu

RLV Restrictions

Parents Lil Helper doesn't have a ground fuction in its punishment menu, but you can achieve the same effect with its powerful RLV restrictions, of which we'll discuss more of later. You can, however, send your child home (to their home location set inside the system), put soap in their mouth, this unlike Yuus & Nuuu won't stop them from chatting in local, but will instead garble their speech slightly so it sounds like they have soap in their mouth which is pretty neat.

You can also make them dependent which will prevent your child from jumping, using far touch, the world map or radar, flying, teleporting locally or teleporting off sim. Lastly but not least you can place them in timeout which will rez out a colourful block that they will then be forced to sit on. Whilst in timeout they won't be able to talk and access their inventory and if they try to stand up they will be force sat back onto the block and the timer reset.

Parents Lil Helper punishment menu

The rewards are very similar to the Yuus and Nuuu system; you can give the child candy, a cookie, some juice or a popsicle. Where the similairies die, however, is restrictions. The RLV restrictions in Parents Lil Helper are seriously powerful and you shoudn't give them to anyone you don't absolutely trust as the list is extensive. In a nut shell your parent can control every aspect of your Second Life! They can control whether you can talk, teleport, send and recieve instant messages, see, hear chat, touch things (anything - so no opening doors), whether you can see people's names and whether you can use things like your inventory, the map, minimap and radar and much much more! This is huge! And Parents Lil Helper definitely kicks Yuus and Nuuus behind where restrictions are concerned! Ouch!

RLV Folders - Outfits

With that said, the last major feature to discuss for both systems is outfits. This is especially useful as it means you or your parent can dress you. For younger kids this is great for bath or bed time as you can roleplay out your parent first undressing you and then getting you all snug and cosy in your favourite pyjamas.

You'll need to set this up in your RLV folder though before it will work. One folder should be named outfits and the other attachments. Then each folder inside the oufits folder should be named after an outfit and the items of clothing corresponding to that outfit placed inside as seen above for the outfit Boy Scout.

How to set up your RLV folders

You'll need to make sure that each item of clothing is assigned to a single attachment point too otherwise it will only put on 1 of those items. You;ll need to do the same for attachments like bottles, sippy cups, helmets and other accessories only instead of in the outfit folder these should go in the attachments folder. That way you can attach certain items or switch between them without also switching outfits, which is very handy!

It's also important to understand how the system works if you're to utilize it properly; when you or a parent selects an outfit it will automatically detach any other item of clothing in any of your outfit sub folders, and then it will put on the items in the folder you selected. So if you're wearing clothing that isn't in one of those folders, it won't be able to take them off for you and you'll have to do it yourself, and while it can be time consuming at first to set up all those outfit and attachment folders, it is well worth it once you have done.

Lastly, if you want to create a naked outfit for things like bathtime. Simply create a folder named 'naked' in your RLV outfit folder and leave it empty. When selected the system will automatically detach all your items of clothing that are in the folders, and then put everything on from the naked folder, but since there is nothing in the folder it won't have anything to put on. Hence birthday suit time!

Conclcusion

So whats the final verdict then? Which system is superior? Which one wins out? Which one is the Crème de la Crème? Ultimately .... they are both incredibly good systems and it is incredibly hard to pick one over the other. So many of their features are identical or similar ..... yet there are some important differences! Parents Lil Helper is cheaper, has far superior options for RLV restrictions and a much more precise carrying pose system and better auto teleporting, while Yuus and Nuuu has a superior tantrum system, a more user friendly pose system and more varied rewards. You honestly can't go wrong with either but on balance I would say the cheaper price and the far superior RLV restrictions edges it for Parents Lil Helper .... but only just!

Thank you for reading the article. I hope you found it interesting and informative! Do you agree? Disagree? Please comment and share the article!

Thank you,

James