Step up, take a slip of paper and see what Mother Nature has in store. The students in the Child Development class have started their Parenting Project, which involves taking care of their ‘child’ for four days. To add to their understanding of raising children, teacher Pam Rattan made them randomly choose the weight and gender of their babies. The options were between a 1 liter, 2 liter, and 3 liter Coca-Cola bottle.

“The students were responsible for the purchase of their soda bottles and to decorate them to look like the baby they drew randomly,” Rattan said. “They would stuff the body of the doll with a soda bottle and screw on the baby heads or in one case, a guy used a styrofoam ball.”

These babies go wherever the student goes, in the halls, home with them, to classes, everywhere. And other students have started to take notice, looking at these pretend parents.

“It was really strange walking around with a kid,” junior Nick Daniels said. “A lot of people stare at me and give me looks, mainly because they don’t understand that yeah, I’m a guy and I have a baby doll with a creepy styrofoam head.”

The participants are learning skills that they didn’t know they had now as parents.

“I learned that this is a big responsibility,” sophomore Lauren Lindsey said. “I remember I set my baby down on the desk to get something and a guy came up and tried to take my baby to drink the soda inside but parental instincts kicked in or something so I whirled around and kicked him in the shin so I wouldn’t be reported for child abuse.”

The students can be reported for “child abuse” by teachers, students, or their parents via email.

“I wanted to give them a real life experience about serious parenting issues,” Rattan said. “How to protect their baby, [and] put some responsibility on them.”