Mom Responds With LOL “Yeah, no.” When Her Teen Asks For Help With Class Baby At 3 AM Feeding

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Teen pregnancy is obviously a serious matter, but it can be tough to try & teach teens to avoid pregnancy when reality shows like 16 And Pregnant almost glamorize the idea of being a young mother. That’s why a class baby is a genius idea when you think about it. 

The question is: how do we give teens a taste of the more realistic aspects of what it’s like to really have a baby?

Some high school classes attempt to tackle the issue of teen pregnancy by giving students a “baby” to take care of for the week, in order to give them a sense of what parenthood requires.

Way back in my day, we were given a flour baby. For you youngins, a flour baby is exactly that- it was a sack of baking flour that was wrapped in masking tape. My flour baby was quiet, very low maintenance, and would have made for great cake had it -sorry, HE- not been infested with flour beetles when I finally opened him.

Did carrying around a flour baby make me think twice about avoiding pregnancy? Well, I now have six kids & harbor an irrational disgust for bread products, so the results are mixed.

But these days, technology has come a LONG way in giving kids a very, VERY realistic sense of what parenting an infant would be like. And for us veteran parents, it’s pretty damn funny watching kids try & handle this new techno-baby. A class baby, if you will. 

Without further ado, ladies & gentlemen: meet WILLIAM. The class baby. 

Photo Credit: Lawren Cole Galloway (Facebook)

No, William is obviously not a real baby; he’s an interactive, computer-monitored fake baby that is given to students in many child development classes.

When Lawren Cole Galloway’s daughter Olivia was given the responsibility of “parenting” William for her Early Childhood Education Class, Lawren found her daughter’s reaction to the experiment hilarious.

And thankfully, she shared the anecdote on her Facebook page, so other parents could cackle along in our glee. As of today, the post has already earned over 85K comments and 126K shares.

And just what was Olivia’s experience with William, you ask? Well, let’s see how this little sampling of parenting played out:

Photo Credit: Lawren Cole Galloway (Facebook)

For those of you not in the know, the interactive babies are exactly that- interactive. 

The class baby is computer-programmed to cry at unpredictable intervals, and must be “fed” at regular intervals. The student’s care of his or her interactive baby is digitally recorded, so there’s no stuffing William in a locker for the day (unlike the egg babies of yesteryear, which I’m betting some of you had. And broke. Or scrambled with a side of bacon…)

While the experiment is only over a short period of time, I love that Olivia was:

Absolutely exhausted and ready to quit the class and give William back.

We feel you, Olivia. Sure, those first few days of drowsy newborn life seem like bliss, until sleep deprivation hits you like a speeding train. Parenting immediately turned out to be WAY harder than she anticipated, and most of us are thinking, “True THAT!” 

…maybe even throw him back.

(Good thing she didn’t, because I’m thinking a throw would be an automatic fail, no?)

Babies are by nature in need of constant care & nurturing, so the work alone was probably a valuable wake-up call.

But the sleep deprivation– that’s a whole ‘nother ball of pain. And while we can relate to Olivia’s struggle, you can’t help but laugh -just like her mom did- when she did this:

 She came into my room last night around 3 am. She was crying real tears while feeding him his bottle. She was begging me to help her because she just wanted to get some sleep. 

Photo Credit: Lawren Cole Galloway (Facebook)

Did anyone else do the ugly-cry onto your baby’s head while feeding them in the wee hours of the morning, on virtually no sleep? YOU KNOW YOU DID. I know I did!

But at least Olivia has her mom to help her, right? When poor, exhausted Olivia brought her wailing little William into Lawren’s room at 3am for some support, Lawren’s response was:

 Yeah, no.

BAHAHA!!!! Her response is exactly what I would have done & said to my daughter, too. And based on the post’s comments, the overwhelming majority of readers absolutely agree with her.

Now of course if William were Olivia’s actual child, Lawren would surely have had compassion for her, and been more than happy to help. But the whole point of William is to teach teens that this parenting thing is NO JOKE. It’s a beautiful experience, but it’s also gritty, intense, and exhausting. And the sooner teens get to experience a taste of the more realistic parts of parenting, hopefully they put off having kids a bit longer.

But of course if William isn’t enough of a real-life experiment for some students, myself and countless other moms would be happy to volunteer time with our own babies & toddlers for them to really know what it’s like. We’re more than happy to “help”!

9 COMMENTS

  1. If my daughter came crying to me, I would say YES. I would do this because I hope when she is a parent, she knows to ask for help rather than make a poor choice. I would do this because women should support each other. And most of all, I would do it because I believe if you love someone then your default should be to support them if they struggle.

    • Depends on your interpretation of “help”. If the daughter expectation would be, (as it is with any child raised by a helicopter parent) “Take this kid mom, I’m going back to bed” Thereupon, the helpful mother would wearily take the baby and cute little felt sorry for teen mommy would head for dreamland. On the other hand, if helpful means, “Here honey, let me take the baby while you fix a bottle” or “I’d be happy to sit with you while you cry and get it out.” Then yes, I would help. That’s what any loving parent would and should do,

      • AMEN! Having a baby at a young age had been glamorized! I would jump at my daughter taking on of these classes so she can see just what being a parent entails. And some people don’t have “help” when the baby is crying and won’t stop. I had my husband but we were on a rotation. Some women don’t even have that.
        So yeah! I would absolutely say no to my teen when this robobaby wont stop! We need to raise strong kids not the bubble babies running around today!
        And off my soapbox… Namaste

    • You’re kidding right??
      Please say you are kidding.
      There is no way a mentally healthy adult could miss the point of the article this bad..
      Seriously say you are kidding

  2. Agree with Heidi. I was an Ob/Gyn for a dozen years. Oftentimes the teen mom would leave the baby with Grandma, “so she could finish school.” Sounds good, right? And then the teen would have her second pregnancy, and here we go again. So there is helping and enabling. The enabling has to stop, as it doesn’t teach our kids true responsibility and consequences. I’m with the woman in the original post as was my own mother. She would OFTEN tell me, “when you have kids, don’t think I’m raising them. I already raised mine.” As harsh as it sounds, I KNEW she was not playing…it was not hyperbole or empty threats. My butt would’ve been on my own, and I knew it. So…I didn’t make those choices that would put me in a poor position. (I made other not-so-smart teenage decisions, but this wasn’t one of them). I tell my girls the same.

  3. I have mixed feelings about not helping with a newborn. I agree that a teen w/a baby needs to learn the responsibility of their baby but I was a teen mom and the adult relative I lived with used it as more of a punishment rather than encouraging to be responsible. This relative would refuse to hold my baby so I could do basic things like sleep and shower. She watched me fall asleep with my newborn who I almost dropped several times. Then she’d talk about how badly I was at mothering to her friends.
    Yes it’s irresponsible to become a teen parent but in most cases there is a support group/community to help with a baby. I think William is a great idea.

    • I was also a teen mom. And my mom had little to no interaction with my first born. That being said……this is NIT a REAL baby. In this scenario the teen NEEDS to be left to their own devices, and honestly they need to be reminded that this not being a real baby drastically decreases the amount of actual responsibilities that go into having a child.

      If executed and taught properly, this exercise can teach the incredibly vulnerable, sexually actively, and reproductive able teenagers that having a child is not easy despite the “know it all” mentality that all teens have.

      So no, I wouldn’t help. I would tell my teen that this is only a SMALL taste into parenting. This doesn’t include the finance worries, the insurance worries, the doctors appointments, and everything else. This is only one small part, and not even the full force of one small part. If you can’t handle one small minimized part of having a newborn, then you’re definitely not able to take on the full force of having an real baby. This is also the closest realistic scenario to single mom life that you’ll get. We aren’t their spouses. This is a good time to remind them the importance of making the best decisions for family planning.

      This is also the perfect opportunity to talk about sex, BC, STD’s, options, & family planning. This is good opportunity to open a safe dialogue with your teen daughter that thought she knew it all.

  4. I LOVED my gran for how she spoke to me about what it means to have children. She said, “When you have children, your life is no longer “about you”, it is about that baby. Everything is for the baby FIRST; you want to shop? your baby needs clothes first; go someplace? your baby’s wants come first; “going” and friends is over.” I thank her every day for that speech (which she made more than once). She was “mean” and honest and TOLD me the truth so that I didn’t have to LIVE that truth.

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