This past month at BHS, students have been spending their weekends waking up at odd hours of the night just to take care of computerized babies for Paul Musselman’s class, Human Growth Development.

Although some would say that is is fun to have the baby for the weekend, that’s not all the project is about. The project is about teaching students the hardships of parenthood.

“It’s about babies and being educated about the responsibility of babies,” Musselman said. “When they mishandle or neglect their babies, they get counted off for their grade. So, the lesson being that children are difficult to take care of an require a lot of responsibility.”

The babies turn on Friday night at 5 p.m. and then proceed to cry whenever they need to be fed, rocked, burped, or need a diaper change. Just like a real baby, the baby does not have a schedule and cries at random times, whether that be 6 p.m. or 1 a.m.

“My baby did not start crying til 8 p.m.,” Lexi Evans said. “After its first cry, it cried every two hours during the night but only three times during the day.

Students were sent home with a log that they must fill out every time that baby cries. On the log they write down why the baby was crying, when it cried, and how long it took to make the baby happy. Sometimes it was difficult to figure out exactly what the baby wanted.

“It was hard at first, but it has a specific cry for every need, so you catch on pretty fast.” Evans said. “It would take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour until the baby was finally happy.”

After doing this project, students have become more away of the fact that having a baby is a lifetime commitment and not something that you take care of only when you want to.