Odyssée students from grade 10 to 12 in Sylvie Vannier’s open class are learning all about parenthood including changing fresh dirty diapers.
Dirty diapers, sleepless nights, and a severe crimp in their social lives are just a few of the issues students at Odyssée are up against as they what it takes to be a parent.
From pregnancy to kindergarten students from grade 10 to 12 in Sylvie Vannier’s open class are learning all about parenthood.
“We’ve gone through the process at the beginning we obviously talked about contraception, sexual health, infections that kind of thing,” says Vannier.
She says the students did research projects on pregnancy and delivery, which included wearing empathy bellies, and now have graduated to taking on the responsibility of taking care of a baby for 5 nights. Students have been assigned a RealCare Baby, an electronic lifelike baby designed by NASA that simulates what it is like to care for an infant 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“They have very intricate controls, they react to movement so they love to be rocked, they love to be held, and students need to, they have a random schedule, so it could be anywhere from needing to be fed, needing to be burped, needing a diaper change and the baby will only react once you’ve done those things,” she explains.
“And the student never really knows what to expect the same you would with a real baby.”
Vannier says the project not only includes the student as the baby is in the home parents and families become involved in care as well.
“Because sometimes they are having to sit with the babies if their teenager is in the shower, so they’re realizing quite quickly the responsibility of having this baby.”
Vannier stresses learning to drive or getting ready for a career students need training and that is true of parenthood.
“It’s to prepare them,” she states.
“I think you need a course to learn how to drive a car, you need a you know a course before you become a mechanic there’s no such thing technically as a book to teach you how to be a parent. And these experiences are not only academic and book wise and philosophy wise, and it really gets them thinking about the bigger picture, but it’s also hands on with the babies.”
“So the idea is to try and lay the ground the basis for what these kids will have to face some day, for most of them now - hopefully later rather than sooner.”
Consensus of the students who had had their week with the baby and the fresh parents was that no one was ready to be parents anytime soon.
Carley Size said she was exhausted after having the baby for a week as her baby cried all night long.
“I learned that I should not have a baby right now, not that I was planning to because I totally wasn’t, but it’s hard,” she states ardently.
“It was hard and stressful because like I had school work to do, but then the baby would cry and you’d be like no time to do anything else and it was like of great, wonderful.”
“I didn’t know that it was such a high priority, I had to give up lots of things just to take care of the baby. But I know that now,’ she adds.
Size says for students putting themselves in a position that could lead to parenthood that they should really think about it.
“My message would be make sure that if you are going to have a baby be ready … you have to know that you are ready with like financially and emotionally or else it might cause stress and you might be go insane because it is too much.”
Miguel Palmer says that as he goes through the learning process it just confirms that parenthood is not in the cards for him at this point, but that he wouldn’t walk away from responsibility.
“No, I’m not ready to be a parent, but if it was ever to happen I’d take responsibility in my own hands and I’d have to deal with it.”
