Students react to child care experiences with digital babies

By Anica Henderson on May 11, 2022

“I was really excited to do the baby project as I have always loved little kids. It was relatively easy caring for the baby, but I had one rough patch in the middle of the night the first day where she cried for about three hours straight. Other than that, I had zero missed tasks, and it was pretty simple and didn’t require a lot of extra effort. I thought she was really nice to have for a couple of days and made me feel in a way needed, like I was caring for something.”

—junior Kylie Giesler

“The good days were like breathing fresh air, and the baby only cried like every two hours sometimes. The bad times were definitely at night when I didn’t want to get up. Overall, it was very helpful and showed me kind of how it is to have a child. Going into it I was excited because I just wanted to know what it would be like. I chose to do it because it sounded fun and I wanted to know what it would be like to care for a baby.”—sophomore Jillian Conder

“Overall, the experiment was a little bit hard. The first night was hard, but it was only hard because I had school work I needed to do that involved both hands, but I learned how to do my school work with one hand. However, the second night was a complete mess. The baby cried so loud in the middle of the night, and I tried everything—feeding, changing the diapers, changing the clothes, rocking the baby, burping the baby—I did everything I was told to do, but it didn’t stop the crying until I did it for the third time.

Going into it, I was very excited. I was a little nervous, but I was excited. I chose to do it because one of my best friends was doing it at the same time I was, and he wanted ‘our babies’ to hang out together. (They never did.) So I guess I was kind of peer pressured into doing it, but I was thrilled to turn the baby in.”

—junior Alexis Smith

“I had the baby Tuesday and Wednesday night and returned it Thursday. My days with the baby were difficult as I constantly had to be with the baby because it was always needing something. It really puts it into the perspective of what it is going to be like to have a real baby. Going into it, I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it was. I didn’t really have any free time to do what I like to do, and it was frustrating having to get up in the middle of the night to take care of it.”

—sophomore Abigail Pearson