Dolls teach of parenthood Brewer students take ‘babies’ home

BREWER – For the past three years, Brewer Middle School has offered a program to its eighth-graders called “Reducing the Risk.”

“It’s really centered around the consequences of being [sexually] active,” said physical education and wellness teacher Randy Hutchins, who started the program. He added that difficult decisions should be made not on emotion, but on educated self-discussion.

“Reducing the Risk” is offered as a regular part of the curriculum, but parents have the opportunity to choose not to have their teenager participate, “which very rarely happens,” said Hutchins, who lives in Holden. Hutchins has three children of his own and is in his eighth year at Brewer Middle School.

The program is abstinence-based, teaching refusal skills – how to say no to any negative pressure that teenagers may experience – consequences of behavior, and sexually transmitted diseases, Hutchins said. He talks with pupils about the core values that they hold as well as lifelong goals. Goals are set according to those values, he said.

Special dolls called “Baby Think It Over” and “Ready-Or-Not Tots” provide a near-real life experience for the teens over a 24-hour or weekend period.

“It’s almost scary how demanding it is,” Hutchins said.

The dolls contain microchips that record “just about everything,” Hutchins said, including how long the baby cries, how many times it is fed, how many diaper changes it has had, and whether or not it was cared for appropriately or handled roughly. A microchip in the baby’s bottle will cause crying if the bottle is removed too soon or is not positioned correctly.

“The baby actually responds to head support,” Hutchins said, adding that if the head is not supported properly, it will flop.

The dolls are on a schedule. They cry at 1 a.m., 5 a.m. and randomly, as a real baby would do. If the dolls’ needs are not attended to promptly and accurately, the crying will happen more randomly – and more persistently.

For example, if a doll isn’t burped properly, it will cry until that need has been adequately met. Sometimes the “parent” may not be patting the baby’s back with the right amount of gentle force sufficient to produce the desired result – something that can happen with a real parent and baby when the parent is sleepy, Hutchins said.

Hutchins gets digital reports from the chips and goes over the results with his pupils.

Even after 24 hours with a doll, “sometimes they still see [an unplanned pregnancy] as not happening to them,” Hutchins said.

“James” said he had always thought that it would be “kind of cool” to have a baby, but said his perspective changed “when [the baby] first started to cry.”

“And I couldn’t figure out what it was [that was making the baby cry],” he said.

And as for sleep? “It was hard,” James said.

One comment Hutchins has heard from kids is, “I never thought taking a shower could be so hard.” Young people have told him how they had gotten in the shower, heard the baby cry, gotten out of the shower to attend to it, and lost the shower to a sibling in the meantime.

Comments from parents almost always include, “Give the child a baby more than one or two nights,” Hutchins said. “The parents do see the value in it,” he said.

Some 120 eighth-graders attend Brewer Middle School. Of that number, 100 are involved in the “Reducing the Risk” program, Hutchins said.

Penquis CAP loans several “Baby Think It Over” dolls to the school, and combined with the five “Ready-Or-Not Tots” provided by Brewer Middle School, they amount to 15 dolls for pupils to use. The “Reducing the Risk” program runs for two to three weeks, Hutchins said.