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I adopted Sophie from windhelm and tried to give her a gift and i had the child's doll and the girl's grey dress in my inventory, but the choices were all greyed out and when i clicked on the items, it said "Item is too heavy to carry". What am i doing wrong?

Have you given her gifts before?

Perhaps her inventory is full? NPCs won't take items that would over-encumber them. Pickpocket her and see if she's loaded with items as it is.

no, this is the first time.



i can't, you've never been able to pickpocket kids.

That's weird, I can.

i play on 360, if it makes a difference.

You sure you cant pickpocket them? try again, I'm on 360 and I'm 85
% sure I could but have not played ina while

i tried 5 different kids all across the map, it doesn't work.

Do your children have the Follower's dialogue tree? If so, you can drop your gift and tell the child to pick it up.

They do not. You can tell them stuff to do (like go home, go outside, go to bed, do chores, give gift, or play a game.)

well, what normally happens when giving gifts to your children?

Honestly, it doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong. This sounds like another one of Hearthfire's bugs.

There's no other good reason why you'd get the "Item too heavy" message when in fact the child isn't over-encumbered. As for having the dialogue options greyed out, that means you've already used those options previously, and the NPC has nothing new to respond with.

However, there's another possibility, but it's pure speculation. Followers can have "hidden" items in their inventory which don't show up on-screen, but do add to the NPC's carry-weight. The Giant's Club is a good example of this. Although adopted children aren't true "Followers" in Skyrim's gameplay mechanic, it might be possible that Bethesda gave them some of the Follower coding as a developmental shortcut. I have absolutely no idea how the adopted children's AI is structured, but perhaps Bethesda endowed them with the appearance of childish curiosity, and they are prone to picking up in-game items, and those items simply don't appear in their inventories.

no, i was referring to the items in the 'GIVE GIFT' menu being greyed out, not dialogue. They're all greyed, and has the same effect as when trying to give a follower an item to carry when they're over encumbered, except she has no reason to be over-encumbered.

it could be that she's going around picking crap up, but i have no way of finding out.

Sofie has a whole slash of Flower Baskets in her inventory. If you have the Merchant perk, you can see the baskets when she comes up to you and tries to sell you flowers. She seems to spawn more over time, as she had 25 or so baskets when I first talked to her and then later on she had 83 of the things.

I have the exact same thing. I adopted 2 kids and we life in Lakeview Manor. Sofia will not except any gifts where as my boy will.

This is a known bug with Sofie. Unfortunately, the only fix found so far involves using the console.

As this issue is resolved and it's a necropost, I'm locking the thread.