The Beginning of Wisdom

Today, I swung by to see my “girls” at the group home, expecting them to be fairly surly to be locked up on Valentine’s Day. On the contrary – they were all in good spirits and happy to see me. Most of the girls have guardians ad litem but some visit more than others. The ones who have GALs who don’t visit sometimes feel gypped. Even the ones who get aggravated with me take a certain amount of pride in the fact that “their” GAL comes to see them. Sometimes I feel like the new bike at Christmas because they all want to show me off.

They have a program you may have heard about where they have a baby doll that they have to take care of. The girls begin the program by wearing a 9 month pregnancy suit so they know what it is like to be hauling around all that weight. After the baby arrives, the “mother” is equipped with a bracelet and if they leave the baby by more than a few feet, an alarm goes off and someone kidnaps the baby. The baby cries when it is hungry, cries with it needs comforting, cries when it needs a diaper change, cries when it needs burping, etc. Each cry is slightly different and the mother has to learn to recognize the different cries and take appropriate action. When they pick up the baby, they have to run their bracelet over the child so that it registers that it is actually its “mother.” They have diapers to change (the diaper has a sensor). They can bottle feed or breast feed. One of the “mothers” I spoke to had opted to wear a breast sensor because all she had to do was cuddle the baby to her chest and it would be soothed (there is a nursing “patch” with a sensor). She said it was easier than fixing the bottle because while she “heated” the milk the baby would scream. If she holds the baby incorrectly, it screams. The baby is programmed to go 24/7. She has to feed it, change it, sooth it, etc., round the clock. She has been missing a lot of sleep.

An interesting part of the program is that not all the girls get a baby. Only a couple at a time have that responsibility. Because of this, only the "mothers" have the responsibility of care and very quickly they find themselves dealing with the isolation that comes from having to stop what they are doing to care for an infant while their peers go their merry way. They don't really have the comfort that would come from being part of a group where everyone is in the same boat.

The “mother” had really been doing a lot of thinking as a result of the experiment. She was thinking a lot about the sorts of questions a real child might ask her, some day. “Do I want to tell my baby that I spent my 15th birthday in a group home?”
Bless her heart.
Happy Valentine’s Day.