Do you remember high school, when we had to carry around an egg or a sack of flour and pretend it was a baby? Yeah, it wasn’t very effective but still, we all did it and still remember it, even if it was many years ago. We hope that it scared some kids straight but we may never know.

They still do something similar today but rather than a sack of flour, they are using a techno-baby. It’s a doll that does many of the ‘baby things’ that make being a parent so interesting. When teens are assigned one of these dolls, they think it’s going to be an easy grade. They have no idea what they are in store for.

The baby might not have a real heartbeat but it does many of the things that real babies do. This would include crying at random and for no reason or needing fed in the middle of the night. You can’t cheat on the project because everything you do is recorded so, if you care about your grade, you will do your best.

Lawren Cole Galloway is one mother who was thrilled when Olivia, her daughter, came home with the fake baby. The doll, named WIlliam, was a parenting experiment from her Early Childhood Education Class. How would she handle the assignment? The mother was anxious to find out.

As it turned out, the first night home with William really told the tale. Olivia had a rude awakening, literally, and Lawren thought the situation was hilarious.

Lawren posted info about the experiment on Facebook and it went viral, gathering more than 300k shares. When ‘real’ parents found out how big of a problem Olivia was having, they couldn’t stop laughing about it.

“My favorite moment so far is when she came into my room last night around 3 am,” her mother said in the post. “She was crying real tears while feeding him his bottle. She was begging me to help her because she just wanted to get some sleep. Yeah, no.”

Like all caring parents, Lawren understands what its like to take care of crying babies. She was chuckling just a little at the request.

Lawren did say that she would have shown more compassion if it had been a real baby but she wanted the experience to sink in. The point of the exercise is to teach what having a baby is like and that teenager was getting it with both barrels.

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