Babies on Board

Rice Babies Take over Again

Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

After learning many psychological theories, students in Deijah Washington’s Intro to Psychology class are applying their knowledge to taking care of their rice babies. Students are put in groups of four and share a rice baby that resembles a new born baby. Washington put 10 pounds of rice into a stocking so that students can know what it feels like to hold a baby. The groups come up with a custody schedule of when each student will have a turn with the rice baby. The project lasts a week and a half and by the end of it, students are supposed to gain knowledge of what it is like to have a personal connection to the rice baby.

Students walked around campus with their rice babies, causing excitement and commotion from teachers and students who wanted to know about the project or hold the baby.

“[My favorite part of the project was seeing] people’s faces whenever they see us carrying around a ten bag pound of rice,” senior Hanson Higdon. “Babies need a lot more care and attention than you think. Definitely makes me wanna wait to have kids.”

Part of the lessons of child development included the psychological effects of caring for a child which was felt by students caring for the child.

“My favorite part of the rice baby project was probably being able to carry it around and letting other people hang out with it,” freshman Sophia Lee said. “It is a lot harder to take care of a baby than I thought even if it was just a bag of rice.”

Beyond school, the rice babies went with the students everywhere they did. The responsibility of carrying around the rice baby has made students aware of the immense responsibility of caring for a real child.

“First we made a child out of a 10 pound bag of rice and put eyes and a face on it and we had to carry it around for a couple of days,” junior Nash Beshears said. “I would take the child to football practice every day, take it to school and all of my classes; just pretty much everywhere I went. I think [the project is a good representation] because babies are a lot to maintain so you have to be with them the whole time.”