I used to have similar problems to you regarding playing the Sims 4 on my laptop, I found that updating the drivers helped, playing in offline mode and cleaning my fan, in addition to what everybody else here has suggested.
My situation however, was a little different as I had dropped my laptop a few months beforehand and that was contributing to the issue, I had to get it fixed and my fan eventually got replaced. Said laptop is about six years old so it's been traded in for a new desktop, it still works and runs the Sims 4 pretty well so I keep it as a back up computer. Just out of curiosity, how old is your laptop? I noticed that you haven't mentioned it's specs or anything and some older computers can struggle to keep up with the game now, due to all the packs and updates etc. You could always try playing with some of your packs turned off and see if that helps.
If you have CC or Mods installed then this can cause crashing too as they can become corrupted with updates and wreak all sorts of havoc in your game, it doesn't sound like this is your case but I thought it worth mentioning.