Lost sleep. Inconvenience. Stress. These are some of the things students experience during the parent simulation project in Child Development class.

“It was annoying,” sophomore John Huggins said. “I was grumpy because I lost sleep. The baby kept waking me up.”

The project teaches students what a baby is like. When the babies cry, students must insert a key depending on what it needs.

“The purpose is for students to learn typical schedules of a newborn including feeding, diaper changing, sleeping and attention,” said Trudy Peden, who has taught the class for four years at Center Hill High School. “Each baby has a control box that is powered by a nine-volt battery.”

The babies, called Ready or Not Tots, weigh seven pounds each and cost $310. There are five babies and five students take one home on their assigned night.

“They don’t like it or they are horrified,” Peden said. “Some never want a child. The most popular comment is that they are very annoyed and ask how can it cry so much? They say, ‘Mrs. Peden, how could you do this to me?’”

Peden said the project is two grades, test and homework. On a form sent home with the students, they must write the times the baby cries and what its needs were. Students also must write what they were doing at the time and how they felt.

“It was hard on me sleeping wise,” sophomore Gage Metzger said. “I only got three hours of sleep because it cried 15-20 times. It was rough because I was asleep and still had to write it down.”

Metzger said the project taught him that he is not ready to be a father.

“No, I’m young,” he said. “And I would need a companion to help. I have a better sense of understanding of what my parents went through.”