Child Development Project

There is no worse feeling than getting awakened in the middle of the night.

Repeatedly.

Senior Hannah Jones experienced this first hand when her Child Development RealCare Infant woke her up – and kept her up – while she was caring for it as part of her assignment.

"My experience was interesting for sure," said Jones. "I was very optimistic when I first took it home, but as it got later into the night, I'll be honest, I started not to like the robot baby as much. I got three hours of sleep in total. Sometimes, I'd have an hour between it needing something, which was nice. I abandoned the idea of sleeping around 2 a.m."

This opportunity was new for Child Development teacher Lauren Siefert as well. "This is the first year we have had the RealCare Infant Simulators," she said. "My students are usually very excited to take Baby home, but the next day they are even more excited to return Baby to me."

Jones agreed, stating "I decided to keep track of my adventures with the baby on my Instagram story. People told me the rest of the week how much they enjoyed seeing all the trouble it was giving me. I had no problem giving it back, and in fact, was very happy to."

According to Siefert, the project aims to teach the students how to care for an infant, and also expose them to the demands that come with having an infant that requires round-the-clock care. "The RealCare Infant Simulators are incredibly realistic," she said. "The babies are randomly programmed to follow the schedule of one of 15 real infants. They will cry and require care just like a real infant would – at all hours, even in the middle of the night. Over the course of the simulation, students will need to feed, burp, rock and diaper their Infant Simulator as if it were a real infant."

Senior Hannah Jones documents her experience caring for the RealCare Infant.

Photo Courtesy of Hannah Jones

Jones thought she had it all figured out, but it was a lot more than she had bargained for. "I made it a place to sleep and set out all of the things that it came with," she said. "But, I was not mentally or emotionally prepared. It was draining."

One of the goals for Siefert was to make the experience as close to real life as possible for her students. "I hope they gain an understanding of how their life would be changed if they became a parent," she explained.

With that end goal in mind, Siefert had ways of checking on how well her students were doing in their daily care. "The students need to keep their Baby safe and dressed appropriately for the temperature and time of day using the provided outfits," Siefert said. "The outfits and diapers all have a sensor in them that will show me what outfit Baby wore and when. The baby is also programmed with a thermometer that will measure the temperature of the environment the baby is in throughout the simulation."

The class currently has four RealCare Infant Simulators to share so everyone gets a chance at the experience. "Students have signed up for either one night or one weekend from the end of Fall Break until the beginning of Thanksgiving Break," said Siefer. "Up to four students can take a baby home each night since we have a small number of babies to go around. Each day, we check in with the students who completed the simulation the night before and ask how things went."

Even though things were a little rough for Jones, the project was educational for her. "The best part was being able to figure out what the baby needed, and the worst part was getting no sleep and dealing with loud cries," said Jones.

Having been through the experience, Jones had advice for future participants: "Try and have patience, get sleep when you can and drink coffee because you're not going to get much sleep."

Story by Connor Burress