This past week around Freedom’s campus, some students have been bringing life-like baby dolls to their classes. While entertaining, the dolls are more than just toys. They’re meant to educate students about parenthood.

Students of Mrs. Andersen’s Parenting Skills class have begun checking out the Real Care Baby Dolls, sometimes referred to as ‘simulator babies,’ as part of a quarterly project.

“The doll gives students a real life, hands-on gist of what parenthood is like,” explained Andersen.

The doll is active from the time the student gets home until the student wakes up for school the following day. In the period, the student must feed, burp, change, and rock the simulator baby. Any rough handling, such as shaking the baby or a lack of head and neck support, will be detected by the dolls’ imbedded computer chip, immediately deducting points from the project grade.

“It was a stressful experience,” said Sophomore Destiny Hawkins, “At first, I was excited. Then as the night went on, I got more and more frustrated like any new parent would.”

Although the students are expected to attend school the day after taking the baby home, the baby will demand to be cared for at any time of the night, which can continue well into the morning until the baby shuts off.

“The babies are pretty accurate, because real babies are demanding, and these babies are quite that,” stated Anderson.

According to DoSomething.Org, the United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world. Three in ten teens will get pregnant by the age of twenty, resulting in about 750 thousand annual teen births.

Aside from the highly anticipated Baby Project, students cover a plethora of topics in Parenting Skills, ranging from family structures to the mental development of a child. Over the course of a semester, the class is meant to give students a better understanding of parenthood and offer beneficial information about caring for and nurturing children in general.

“I took this class because I really wanted to get the baby,” Angel Flores, 10, admitted, “but I’ve ended up learning so much more.”

If students don’t want to give a simulator baby a try for a night, they can elect to do an alternate assignment that might not keep them up all night.