Parenting struggles are real and all parents would say that raising a child is the most challenging phase in life. In order to educate the young people about the challenges of parenthood, a school in Ontario is giving fake babies to their students to take care of. Chippewa Secondary School offers a special unit called Raising Healthy Children where their students are allowed to take realistic baby dolls home. The idea behind this class project is to let the teenagers experience what it is like to take care of a child. Hence, this experience prepares them for the real thing in the future.
Are The Dolls Like Real Babies?
As part of this annual class project, the students bring home and take care of the babies for just one weekend. Well, you might think that’s a piece of cake. But these baby dolls are not like toys that you see in stores. The dolls are Real Care babies and they are programmed to simulate a real infant. Needless to say, these dolls cry when they are hungry or when they need to be held. Furthermore, they also need to be burped after feeding. And yes, changing their diapers is also a part of the program.
Basically, these babies provide hands-on experimental learning for teenagers. By taking care of them, they are able to understand what it means to become a parent. The baby’s cry waking them up in the middle of the night, rocking the tiny tot to sleep and cleaning up their barfs and pees. These are only a few of the challenges waiting for them in becoming a parent. The dolls are also record abuse, rough handling, lack of care and temperatures.
“Our school board (Near North District School Board) owns the babies and each school accesses them through the year for their classes,” the teacher of the class, Andrea Lefebvre said. “Lots of use!”
As expected, the students were at a loss by the task of raising of a baby. It seems the agonizing couple of days may have been a bit too much for some of them. The only person they could turn to for help was their class teacher. From that two-day span, Lefebvre received a barrage of texts from her panicking students. For sure, taking care of these babies will teach them to become a more responsible parents in the future.
Here are some of the hilarious text messages from the students about the babies
Here’s what people have to say about the experimental class project with the fake babies
Source: Facebook