Psychology teacher Alison Adams continued her annual flour baby tradition, requiring each of her students to care for a 5 lbs. bag of flour in order to learn about the challenges of parenthood. Students received their flour babies January 22 and cared for them through January 30.

Adams hopes that her students learned a lot from the week they spent with their flour babies. She said, “The purpose is to teach students in detail particularly the first 5 years of life, the development stages, and parenting styles.” The project is also meant to teach responsibility and to have students learn about their own childhood.

According to Adams, students are educated about their real life as a kid, including milestones, toilet training, the significance of their name, their mother’s pregnancy, labor, and birth details.

Sophomore Tara Dadafarin thought the most difficult part about having a flour baby was making sure no one took it. She said, “It’s hard to remember bringing it everywhere and not dropping it.”

Students were required to make up a story about how their child was born. They were allowed to either fabricate an adoption or create a narrative about the conception and birth.

The week began with students buying their bags of flour and putting them into diapers. They then randomly drew genders, picked names, and clothed their babies. “Each day for a week the baby gets one year older. We talk about what happens during that period of time,” said Adams.

Dadafarin and sophomore Kylie Tran enjoyed the experience. Tran said, “I really like how you can give your flour baby to other people to babysit so you can have a break. It’s also fun matching it with friends and having it take pictures with your swim coach, and I liked buying stickers for the baby book.” Dadafarin said her favorite part was drawing her baby’s face and dressing it.

Adams hopes that the students will become more aware of their own personal upbringings and backgrounds. At the end of the week, each student will make a memory book with stories and pictures of both the students and their flour babies growing up over the course of the week. “It’s a fun way to teach the developmental unit,” said Adams.

Dadafarin said, “We learned that parenting is really time consuming and a difficult task. Even though our babies don’t speak and are made of flour they still need a lot of care and attention.”

According to Adams, in order to ensure students were being responsible parents, the babies were marked with a sharpie every day. “I’ve emailed all teachers, administration, and Hammer with a list of all the students. Everybody on campus is in on this. Teachers email me and tattle on the kids, and all teachers have permission to steal babies.”

Adams said babies have been found in backpacks and left at home multiple times. According to Adams, Associate Principal Scott Biezad came into her class and opened the door, grabbed a baby, and ran out with it.