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I just wanted to share a story. I was in a video store tonight trying to read the backs of the DVD's, and there was a woman and a few teenagers walking around with a TOY baby, trying to get the toy baby to stop crying!
I think they had the "baby" as a parenting school assignment or something. However, after about 10 minutes of listening to the crying, I was thinking that if it was a real baby, the parent would have taken the baby out of the store, not just let it cry for so long!
The funny thing was, tonight was the second night in my life I did not have my kids with me (they are at a sleep over), so I probably noticed the noise more. Also, the baby looked real, except that it did not move.....kinda creepy!
Not knocking parenting classes or anything,,,,,,just thought it was unusual to have a toy baby crying in a quiet video store on a Saturday night for such a long time.
Well, that is kind of the whole point of those baby assignments, they are programed to act like real babies so teens get the idea that babies aren't just something cute you dress up and take to the mall.
When the students at our school have this assignment, they start with a pregnancy prosthetic that they have to wear for two days. Then they take their baby home for two days, sometimes over a weekend. They usually come back exhausted from the baby crying all night. Sometimes the boys will put the baby in the closet and cover it up. The result is that the baby dies and the students fail the test.
The babies have computers imbedded in them, so they record their care. Some of them have a set of keys that you have to try to see if they are hungry, need changing, rocking, etc. Others have a wind-up spindle on the back that the students have to turn to get them to stop crying. The babies are programmed to be easy or difficult. The difficult ones cry for hours for no reason, and the teachers can tell if the students have cared for them, ignored them or abused them. Some also measure temperature, blows, and drops.
Sadly to say, in our school, the effectiveness of this experience at delaying real pregnancy is largely absent. Nearly 1/4 of our girls are pregnant or already have children. The irony is when a student with children has to take the computer baby home.
The family in the store may be one of those who just ignores crying babies. We have a lot of them when families come for special events at school. A formal event, such as National Honor Society Induction, is almost always tarnished by a squalling infant whose family sees nothing wrong with spoiling the experience for other families. Sometimes other babies join in and we have a chorus in the auditorium. I've even had to ask parents at Parent-Teacher Conference day to have another child deal with a crying baby, or reschedule an appointment because I could not discuss the matter at hand.
I did not know much about the program until now, interesting!
I guess they were trying to sooth the baby by rocking the baby, which wasn't working. Maybe they were supposed to change the baby's diaper and/or feed it?
The teens were looking for videos, and a person with them, maybe their mother, was the one "taking care" of the baby.
Those things are the most pointlessly fake things. I remember in highschool people had to carry those around(I refused). At my school they banded the key to the 'parent' with a hospital band or something that you could tell if it had been removed. It completely took any realism out of it, because you couldn't even get someone else to watch the stupid thing for a few minutes. Among other problems. Anyhow, those things are retarded.
My neice brought one of those home and my sister went crazy over the weekend with that thing . she said she wrote a note to the teacher about how some parents have to work and dont have time or the energy to get their teen up in the middle of the night to take care of a baby . It did not effect her daughter at all and my sister could not get her up at all . I dont think teenage girls have a clock inside to wake them up when a baby crys we women who have had babies in our older yrs say 20 + have that clock to wake us up . Needless to say it was a terrible wknd for that household . I agree I dont think they serve any purpose other than to complete the school course .
Those things are the most pointlessly fake things. I remember in highschool people had to carry those around(I refused). At my school they banded the key to the 'parent' with a hospital band or something that you could tell if it had been removed. It completely took any realism out of it, because you couldn't even get someone else to watch the stupid thing for a few minutes. Among other problems. Anyhow, those things are retarded.
I think that was part of the point.... the 'parent' sacrificing certain things to take care of their 'child'. You can't always pawn off your kid on someone else and go partying, which is what many teens think.
I never took humanities/health in high school (I was in the AG program, so we skipped most of that) but had a few friends who went on birth control and completely changed their attitudes on sex due to that program.
Of course, the students at my school had their 'babies' for a week or two at a time, not just 2 or 3 days.
My neice brought one of those home and my sister went crazy over the weekend with that thing . she said she wrote a note to the teacher about how some parents have to work and dont have time or the energy to get their teen up in the middle of the night to take care of a baby . It did not effect her daughter at all and my sister could not get her up at all . I dont think teenage girls have a clock inside to wake them up when a baby crys we women who have had babies in our older yrs say 20 + have that clock to wake us up . Needless to say it was a terrible wknd for that household . I agree I dont think they serve any purpose other than to complete the school course .
I think your sister missed the entire point of the project. If your niece didn't wake up at night and take care of the baby then she should have failed the project not had mom wake her up to take care of the baby.
We told our kids that if they did this project at school they were sleeping in the basement bedroom with them so they didn't wake up the rest of us.
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