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Molly is a very lifelike baby doll that my granddaughter Cassie had to take home for a weekend, as she is currently studying child development at school. Each child in the class had to take a turn, and 14 year old Cassie was eager to discover the delights of caring for a ‘newborn’.
Cassie was issued with a non-removable electronic wristband that recorded the distance between her and the doll, thus enabling the school to ensure that Cassie didn’t just drop the doll in a cupboard and forget about it until it was time to return to school on the Monday morning. The wristband also recorded when the doll was fed or had its nappy changed, and how long it cried for. Marks would be awarded to the most attentive students, and Cassie wanted to obtain the highest grade for her ‘work’ over the weekend.
The first problem occurred when Cassie realised that she would have to travel home on the school bus with Molly, who cried at irregular intervals just as a newborn baby does. My daughter-in-law was summoned to pick her up in the car to avoid the embarrassment of having to face hordes of teenage boys on the bus with a crying doll in her arms.
Back at home, Molly’s cries soon began to grate on Cassie’s nerves. She picked the doll up, rocked it, ‘changed’ its nappy and ‘fed’ it, but it still cried. When she told me this it brought back memories of my 24 year old self let loose with newborn Leon suffering with colic. Like Cassie I remember being in floods of tears by the time Sam came home from work. Sam, ever cool in a crisis, took Leon and straight away sat down with him in perfect silence. Leon, now 37, came home from work and found Cassie in floods of tears holding Molly, who wouldn’t stop crying. Leon, a father of 2 and well trained by now in pacifying babies, showed Cassie how to rock the doll to shut it up.
At night-time, the doll had to be by Cassie’s side due to the electronic wristband. Cassie’s sleep, usually peaceful and undisturbed, began to be pierced by Molly’s shrill tones at unearthly hours of the morning. She was soon in Leon and Kelly’s room complaining that the doll would not be quiet. The whole household began night manoeuvres, walking up and down with Molly, changing its nappy, feeding it copious amounts of ‘milk’, and generally rocking the hell out of it. I wanted to roar with laughter, as memories of rocking Leon backwards and forwards in his pushchair at 2am came to mind.
After a Sunday night also spent in absolute torture, Cassie, by then tired and irritable, had decided that she would never ever have a baby, and that she couldn’t wait to return it to school. Kelly drove her in on Monday morning, and she fairly ran out of the car with Molly firmly under one arm.
I had to keep a straight face as Cassie related the sad tale of her first attempts at child-rearing. Like her I wondered what had hit me in the first few months of Leon’s life, and did not know how on earth I was going to manage. But manage I did, because of course there’s a strong bond between a mother and her baby. I tried to explain to Cassie that it’s a bit different when you have your own real-life baby to look after because you love the bones of it, but she wasn’t listening.
I suppose it’s a good thing that she got to face the reality of looking after a newborn just at the crucial time when puberty decided to strike. Do you suppose that’s why the school decided to farm Molly out to a whole class of teenage girls? Who knows – it just might prevent a few unwanted pregnancies. Poor old Molly; It sounds as though Leon scored the highest marks as regards keeping the doll quiet!
SRahman said:
Thanks your granddaughter to studying continue development of baby life. Nowadays this is don’t continue globally. You take a right decision.
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Stevie Turner said:
Thanks for your comment.
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dgkaye said:
Wow, lots to think about here. First, yes, I think it’s a great idea to maybe put the scare of teenage pregnancy, but in all fairness, even a colicky baby can eventually be pacified, if not for sheer exhaustion. But this doll sounds like it’s programmed to never shut up, lol because it’s not human and can’t recognize a human hug to soothe. 🙂 x
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Stevie Turner said:
Very true, and the mother-baby bond isn’t there, which helps of course.
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dgkaye said:
Of course!
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Sharon E. Cathcart said:
My husband is a historical reenactor, which is important to this story. He was helping teach workshop in the woods, with a group of high school students. They were all given bags of flour to tend as though they were babies … and one of them left her flour bag on a hay bale. The “baby” was abducted with the help of other reenactors. Eventually, four “babies” were abducted. The bags had all been signed by the teacher so they couldn’t just be swapped out, and all of the girls were sure they were going to fail. My husband gave them a bit of a lecture before returning the “babies” … a workshop he didn’t plan to teach … on being responsible parents.
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Stevie Turner said:
Lol. Perhaps they needed a real baby instead of a bag of flour!
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franklparker said:
Brings back mrmories alright – including a certain episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys! By the time we had our son we were living in a 3 bedroom (well, 2 bedrooms + boxroom) house so he had his own space so as not to disturb us.
Why do they only give Moly to the girls? Surely the boys need the same practical lesson.
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Darlene said:
Good point.
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Stevie Turner said:
Molly was given to students undertaking child development, which unsurprisingly were all girls.
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franklparker said:
Why all girls? Have boys (who one day will become fathers) not have a need to learn about child development?
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Darlene said:
My son was a single dad to two girls for a few years. Many boys would benefit from this kind of training. (BTW he did very well. Perhaps mom’s training helped)
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Stevie Turner said:
At 14 the kids get to choose which subjects they want to study. I guess boys of that age are only interested in the mechanics of baby-making and not looking after the end product!
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Stevie Turner said:
Of course they need to, but the girls have personally chosen the subject to study. I expect the boys chose physics, woodwork, or technical drawing, etc. It was ever thus…
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Darlene said:
It sounds like a great method of birth control, if you ask me! I had my son at age 17. He was such a sweet, good baby so I was lucky. After helping mom with my three younger brothers, I knew all about babies and how to look after them. But when I was 30, I wasn’t ready for a teenager! Having children at a young age didn’t stop me from having a great career and a fun life but I encourage young women to wait until they are older to have children. I like the idea of sending Molly home for the weekend and I love your granddaughter’s reaction.
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Stevie Turner said:
I’d had no brothers or sisters, and had no idea what I’d let myself in for. Leon was hyperactive and hardly ever slept. It was a total nightmare for the first 5 years.
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Darlene said:
I can well imagine. But you survived as many others have. Thankfully you had a good partner to help out. Both boys have turned out well too. That is such a bonus.
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Stevie Turner said:
I love them to bits, but those early years are indelibly etched into my brain!
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Penny Wilson Writes said:
Love this story! I think the time spent with that doll is a terrific idea and more schools should do it. And yes, motherhood IS overrated. 🙂 I am a mother too.
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Stevie Turner said:
My second son was totally different though – laid back, placid and no trouble at all. I could have had six more of him, but with my luck I’d have been given six more Leons and ended up with my head in the microwave. You have all these wonderful dreams as a young teenager regarding marriage and motherhood, but the reality is somewhat different! Thanks for your comment.
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jenanita01 said:
I wonder if that doll was being used as a deterrent? Seemed to work though, didn’t it?
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Stevie Turner said:
It did at the time, but whether it will be in the future is hard to tell. The nearer women get to the age of 30, the more they realise their biological clock is ticking and that their window for becoming a mother is reducing…
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jenanita01 said:
You do know it is over rated? I am a mother BTW…
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Stevie Turner said:
By the time we realise motherhood is over-rated we’ve already had 1 or 2 kids! In my experience the first 5 years are terrible, but it gets a bit better after they go to school, lol. There’s a nice window between the ages of about 8 -12, and then the hell starts again as puberty strikes. Now my sons are grown, they’re lovely chaps and I’m glad I had them, but oh, dear, those first 5 years I’d never want to repeat again.
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jenanita01 said:
Swings and roundabouts, Stevie…
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jwebster2 said:
Linked to the blog on facebook because it’s too good not to share.
My child rearing story is when my wife brought our daughter into bed because she wouldn’t be quiet, I slept right through it.
But if a cow in the calving boxes thirty yards from the window made the wrong sort of noise I was immediately awake 🙂
I know my place 😉
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Stevie Turner said:
Lol – how could you sleep with a screaming child in the bed? We started off in a one-bedroom flat. I couldn’t sleep with Leon in a cot beside our bed due to his snuffling and snorting. Sam put castors on his cot and we used to wheel him out very carefully into the hallway so that I couldn’t hear him breathing. When he woke up every morning he must have wondered where the hell he was!
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jwebster2 said:
it’s just a gift 🙂
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petespringerauthor said:
I loved this entire read, Stevie. At first, I thought it must be a piece of fiction, but it is almost more delightful that it is not. I had the same thought you did when I was reading your story—is this the school’s way of showing kids the less glamorous parts of parenthood? That would be the ultimate form of birth control.
I also thought back to my son and the colicky baby that he was. He was nicknamed (not by us but by other relatives), Cryin Ryan. He earned that moniker. It also made me think of other crazy things that we resorted to when we were trying to survive. (e.g., Drives in the middle of the night to get him to fall asleep, running the vacuum at 2:00 in the morning—we must have had the cleanest carpet in town, but he found the noise strangely soothing.)
Parenthood is tough, but I wouldn’t trade any of those memories for anything. Our son was the best decision of our lives.
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Stevie Turner said:
Lol. Our second son was mesmerised by the washing machine when it spun out. He’d sit quite happily in his baby chair looking at it!
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