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Jacalyn Wetzel

Internet

Just one weekend caring for fake baby has teen entirely rethinking her future life choices

Life moves pretty fast.

Photo credit: Canva

School project has teen stressed caring for fake baby

There's not one book or experienced parent that will tell you that parenting is easy. In fact, you'll likely find people either dancing around how hard it can be or simply being brutally honest about the struggles that come with trying to raise tiny humans. It's a noble job that is not for those with a weak constitution...or emotional state.

There are days when you may find yourself so sleep deprived that you cry right along with your baby, hoping against hope that an adultier adult comes to rescue you. Alas, you are the adult, unless you're a teenager who is stuck caring for a plastic baby for your early childhood class.

Shaquita White shared a video of her teenage daughter's experience caring for the woman's temporary plastic grandchild. The teen was tasked with caring for the "real care baby" over the weekend for a grade in her early childhood class. Seems like the girl was immediately in for a heaping dose of reality after being lulled into a false sense of confidence when the baby sat quietly all day–until it wasn't.

As soon as the video starts, the girl declares that she has already failed the assignment while at her track meet before explaining, "I got the baby at two o'clock. I get out of school at 2:45, I'm on the bus it's 3:15. It hasn't made one noise, it hasn't even cooed, it hasn't even giggled, it hasn't even made nothing. And then as soon as I want to start doing my warmups and I have the baby with one of my friends cause it's not making any noise. This baby wanna start yelling and start crying."

The young temporary mom rushed to care for the baby only to realize that she couldn't find the diaper bag that contained the bottles, diapers and other things she needed to make the crying stop. Turns out she forgot the bag on the school bus and had to open the emergency exit door to retrieve it.

That would've been enough to make any new parent stressed out but this all took place in the first few hours of caring for it, she still had to get through the rest of the weekend. Seems the track meet was just the preview of how her weekend undertaking was going to pan out because that little plastic baby definitely had the teen rethinking future decisions.

At one point in the video the teen proclaims she has baby brain from being so frazzled trying to care for the baby while at school. Once the baby screamed so long in the middle of the night that "grandma" woke up to see what was going on only to find her daughter exhausted after waking up every two hours to feed the baby. The teen was so tired that she begins to cry when her mom wakes her up to care for the plastic doll.

Commenters were proud of the teen for doing such a good job caring for the realistic doll while thought the baby is a good reality check for teens.

"At the end She said this baby gotta go! thanks for sharing, I think this is a wonderful project!," someone says.

"Give this girl an A!!! She was trying!!," another person writes.

"I laughed so hard!!! Poor baby!!! Poor Mommy!!!! Poor Grandmother!!!! Hahaha!!!!! Every young girl needs to experience one of these so that they will know teenage pregnancy and parenthood is no joke… Thank you for sharing. This was very entertaining," one person laughs.

"I love her! She is so sweet and responsible- running to the bus. I really felt for her when she cried because she was so tired. She did a great job. You did a great job supporting her too. Well done," another shares.

By the time the weekend was over, the entire family, including the teens siblings were ready for the baby to go back to the early childhood classroom. Even fake babies keep the entire family awake when it would rather cry than sleep. This will be a life lesson that all the kids in the house remember for the rest of their lives.

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Education & Information

A major study claiming men leave their wives when they become ill has been debunked

This is good news.

Photo credit: Canva

Study showing increased divorce when wife is ill is wrong

It was the study that shook views of marriage across the country. Researchers concluded that men simply couldn't handle the "sickness" part of their wedding vows, consistently bowing out of their marriage if their wife became sick. The results of the study were cited everywhere and you can still find them being regurgitated in hot take internet think pieces.

The paper is titled “In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life," and the findings were reported on by large publications. But it turns out the results have serious flaws causing the authors to rush to correct their mistake.

According to Retraction Watch, the first author, assistant professor at Iowa State University, Amelia Karraker "seems to be handling the case quickly and responsibly." The beauty of peer reviewed research is that there are multiple sets of eyes to check your work, which is what led to the discovery of the paper's flaws.

It was her colleagues from Bowling Green State that discovered the error while trying to duplicate the findings. The numbers kept coming up short of what was reported in the original paper.

"I sent them the statistical analysis file, which documents all of the steps as to how we came to all the estimates in the paper. And they pointed out to us, to our horror, that we had miscoded the dependent variable," Karraker tells the outlet.

The mistake had already been printed and republished on multiple media outlets, but the original writers of the paper contacted their editor to alert them of the error. While this error plays a large role in the high risk of divorce when a wife becomes ill, it doesn't completely eliminate it. The risk does still increase but it seems to increase in one health circumstance–heart problems. Other illnesses did not seem to have the same level of divorce risk. So what happened?

Woman in hospital bed

Photo credit: Canva

Well, according to Karraker, not all of the participants finished the study. Turns out the ones that left before the study ended were accidentally coded as having gotten divorced, when that couldn't have been determined since they were no longer participating. Karraker and her co-author got the participant information and data from a previous study conducted by University of Michigan which included data from 2,701 heterosexual marriages.

The study focused on four serious diseases: heart disease, stroke, cancer and lung disease showing an increase in divorce risk if the wife falls ill versus the husband. While Karraker's results were flawed due to the unfortunate mistake, other studies who don't use her results show a significant increase in divorce rates when the wife becomes seriously ill.

In the study "Gender disparity in the rate of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness" by Michael J. Glantz, MD et al, the authors explain, "female gender was found to be the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each cohort." Glantz shares that divorce rate was 11.6% for cancer patients, which is similar to the average. "There was, however, a greater than 6-fold increase in risk after diagnosis when the affected spouse was the woman (20.8% vs 2.9%; P < .001)"

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Internet

Story of a woman who took someone's window seat on a flight has sparked a flood of advice

What would you do in the same situation?

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Woman stole someone's window seat on plane, how to respond

Most everyone has been in a situation once or twice where you look down at your ticket while boarding your flight to double check your seat number only to find someone already sitting in your seat.

Typically the person responds respectfully and with a slight twinge of embarrassment as their error is pointed out to them. It happens to just about everyone at least once. There's no shame in accidentally sitting in the wrong seat.

But what happens when you notice someone sitting in your seat but instead of them excusing themselves from your space, they direct you to sit in their seat? Their middle seat. Unless your original seat was in the lavatory, there is likely zero world where being told to sit in the middle seat feels like an upgrade. There's nothing wrong with the middle seat per se, but unless your seat mate is your partner, friend or family member, you're squished between two strangers fighting for armrest space.

There are all sorts of qualms people have about the middle seat. Having to step over someone to get to the bathroom, having other people step over you to get to the bathroom, someone inevitably falling asleep on your shoulder. The list could go on but it just comes down to comfort, which is why many people pay for a window or aisle seat. But it can feel like you've hit the jackpot when the airline seats you in a window seat without you having to pay an upgrade fee. That's exactly what happened to this Reddit user.

The airline gods shone down on them that day and gifted them with a window seat that they were thoroughly looking forward to only to discover it occupied.

"It was an 8 hour flight, and I wanted to sleep with the wall support the window seat offers. However, when I get on the plane, a lady is in my seat. She says 'oh, I didn’t realize. You can just sit here' and points to the middle seat. I have a hard time with confrontation so I just accepted it. If this were to happen again, how do I respond," u/Hairy_Visual9339 asks.

Commenters were quick to give the timid flyer advice for future encounters with audacity filled seat mates.

Photo of airplane seats with overlay of Reddit screenshot

Photo credit: Canva/Reddit Screenshot

"No, that doesn't really work for me. I'd like my seat," one person quipped.

Another offered their own anecdote as a cautionary tale, "Made the mistake of not doing this on a train. Only one other person in whole carriage, of course it's my seat. They have a laptop set up act like I'm being very unreasonable and so I sit somewhere else. Fine whatever. Four hours into 8 hour journey and the train is now complete full. I've been forced to move seats twice already, everything is booked and I'm some desperate, seat-less vagabond with nowhere to store my suitcases, wandering the aisles in vain, despite having a perfectly good reservation."

When all else fails, tattle, "just say, "I'd rather have my window seat thanks." and if that doesn't work tell a flight attendant."

"My response is always “oh, no thank you” and I just stare at them until they move," someone shares.

Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you can't tell another adult so they can fix the situation when your discontent is being ignored, in one person's case, let the help come to you.

"Some guy tried to take my seat and stick me in his middle seat across the aisle so he could sit with his wife and teenager and I said “oh, no thank you. I picked this seat intentionally when I checked in”. He starts throwing a hissy fit, trying to get me to take his shitty middle seat and the flight attendant swooped in like a freaking goddess, and told him to move. He goes to the other side, still bitching, and banged his head on the luggage compartment so hard that three rows worth of people audibly gasped," says a commenter.

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Humor

This 4-year-old’s reaction coming home from school is all of us after a long day

He is not shy about expressing his exhaustion.

My Wild Child Jude|TikTok

This 4-year-old's reaction is all of us after a long day

There's one thing you can say about little kids that's pretty consistent no matter who the kid is, and it's that they're brutally honest. Whether you have something stuck in your teeth or you've gained weight, a small child will inform you - loudly, and usually in front of others. But one preschooler's moment of honesty is going viral for how relatable it is.

An exhausted and cranky 4-year-old named Jude has had enough. The little boy had just gotten home from school when he must've been asked something before the camera started rolling because his response was a #same moment.

"Listen. No, do you hear me? I'm cranky, I'm tired, I worked hard at school," Jude says to his dad.

Jude's mom, Amber Tinker uploaded the video to TikTok where it went viral with over 14 million views and over 1.5 million likes. The tiny grumpy human was clearly not interested in whatever shenanigans his dad was up to and he let him know it.

Jude's dad, Justin Tinker was attempting to tease the boy about messing with him later but Jude was having none of it. The preschooler quickly repeated that he was cranky and tired after working hard at school. He mumbles something as he walks towards a barn when his dad stops him.

"I've already got everything fed and watered. I already got the eggs, I did your job cause I knew you was tired," Justin calls out.

Though his dad did his chores for him, Jude still didn't feel like he got his point across because later in the video he repeats how cranky and tired he is. Both of his parents explained they also worked hard today and were tired but it was obvious that Jude out tired them all. In the end he declared he was getting a bath tonight. Maybe his mom will bring him a cold Capri Sun and light some candles while he soaks in a bubble bath. Preschool must be rough these days.

Watch the whole video below:

@judemywildchild

This boy has had enough! #HeyJude #Cranky #Tired #kidsoftiktok #Funny #Viral

This article originally appeared on 10.18.23

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