My last few blogs have dealt with educating young people. I started with suggesting that children at the elementary age learn about adoption and also about how to access community resources for various needs. (When I worked on an information and referral phone line at a Family Resource Center, I had one volunteer, a woman of about sixty, who suggested we have a training session on how to use the phone book. I learned not to assume anything regarding education.)
I mentioned a class called Crib Notes written by Lyn, our education blogger here at Families.com, which teaches middle school students about healthy living in general and about caring for other children. The class was targeted at students who care for younger siblings or students who have their own babies (yes, in middle school!). I believe a course such as the babysitting courses taught by hospitals or the Red Cross are a good thing for any child in this age group, whether they babysit or not. However, Lyn rightly points out that this type of class can potentially give students false confidence in their ability to care for a baby. Perhaps this can be countered by reading books such as Annie’s Baby, an anonymous diary of a fourteen-year-old girl who struggles to raise her baby, being responsible for her 24 hours a day for the first three months of her life. As a former nanny myself, I can attest to the fact that it’s much easier to remain patient with a child when you know when you are getting off duty!
Some high schools have experimented with programs which include carrying an egg, a doll, or a ten-pound sack of flour around for a week. In some of these programs the students are instructed (or the “egg” can be programmed like a timer) to set their alarm for every two hours at night, then get up and write in the project journal for ten minutes before returning to bed, to simulate being awakened to feed a new baby.
That reminds me—returning to the preschool/elementary age for a minute, my daughter was eager, last Christmas, to receive a “Baby Alive” doll. The unique thing about this doll is that she “swallows” a pasty sort of “food” which comes in a tube and then she…poops. I didn’t understand the appeal, but she really wanted one, as her cousin did. When the occasion actually arrived to clean the baby doll and change the diaper, both girls were grossed out enough that, while they still carry their babies, they rarely feed them. I have taken the opportunity to remind them that a newborn baby can fill up to ten diapers a day, and not feeding them is not an option.
I wonder if there are any statistics about whether kids who’ve spent their lives around babies are more or less likely to get pregnant too soon. From the time my son was eight months old until he was twenty months old, we shared a house with a family with three girls, ages eleven, thirteen and fourteen. One day one of the older girls took the baby for a walk. He ended up screaming the whole way back. The girl carried him home in an attempt to keep him quiet, and she had carried the stroller as well.
“Now I really understand why teenagers shouldn’t get pregnant,” was her unsolicited comment when she reached home.