By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

Being a single parent is a daunting, oftentimes thankless task and if you’re a 13- or 14-year-old middle school student it can be especially difficult – even if the baby you’re parenting is really just a five-pound sack of sugar or flour.

Last week 32 eighth graders at Mack Lyon Middle School got to experience first-hand some of the finer fundamentals of single parenthood when they became mom or dad for a week of just such a pseudo-baby. The students, all members of Crystal Blackwell’s health class, were required to tote their new pretend child around school, home and literally everywhere just as if it were a real tot.

The class project, which every student who takes health class will have to do this year provided their parent okays them for sex education, is an attempt to acquaint students with one of the more negative possibilities of sexual activity, Blackwell said.

“I wanted to give them an idea of what it would be like to be a single parent,” she said. “The exercise is helping students understand the demands and difficulties of having a child.”

The week-long project, which ended Monday, started when each student picked a slip of paper out of a container telling them the sex of the baby of which they were now the proud parent.

“Some of the kids got a boy but wanted a girl and vice versa,” Blackwell said. “But, just like in real life, they were stuck with what they got. Some kids got a slip that said twins, so they became responsible for two bags.”

A couple of the kids who became parents of pretend-twins at first got a kick out of the idea of having two, proudly displaying perhaps one bag of flour and one sack of sugar. By the end of the project, however, Blackwell said the reality of lugging two five-pound bags around all day changed their mind.

Some make-believe infants quickly sprouted balloon heads with sharpie-drawn faces, while others were outfitted with cutouts of teen idols.

Although the students weren’t required to change or feed their new charges, they were required to dress them appropriately, “since clothing is more than just a fashion statement, it’s actually a form of protection,” Blackwell said.

“The kids were expected to treat the bags like live babies,” the teacher said. “They couldn’t leave it unattended anywhere. At home, they had to hire a baby sitter if they wanted to go somewhere and then pay the sitter with money or a promise to do chores.”

Some of the other teachers at Mack Lyon acted as a day care and allowed new moms and dads to leave their bags … er, babies in certain classrooms for the day.

“Anyone in school who found an unattended baby was supposed to bring it to me and I functioned as protective services,” Blackwell said. “The kids would have to come to me to get their baby back and they’d lose points for the project.”

The biggest complaint from student parents was that the bags get heavy, she said. Some complained about finding a baby sitter.

Some of the lighter moments of the exercise came daily when kids got to pull slips of paper out of a container listing milestones in the lives of their infants.

Examples include “Your baby learned to stand up all by himself today,” or “You were up all night because your baby has colic, or diaper rash,” or “Your baby smiled today because she recognized your voice for the first time.”

“Most of the students thought it was good learning experience,” Blackwell said. “They got the point by the end of the week.”

Several of the students really took the project seriously and quickly became aware of the awesome task it is to care for an infant.

Grades for the student parents were based on the appearance of their baby including any tears, rips or holes sustained during their brief existence; if it was given a face and clothing; a daily journal that detailed the difficulties of being a single parent and how the mock infant affected the student’s normal life; a student-prepared birth certificate; a sign-off by the student’s parent, and finally, an essay about what the student learned.

Some 120 students are expected to have completed the exercise by year’s end.