Parenting Pains : Behavior: At Aliso High, students spend a week caring for a noisy doll. Most decide to delay having children.

Alexandra Sears, a 17-year-old high school senior, quickly bonded with her newborn baby, Lilly. The teenager quieted the baby’s cries in the middle of the night, carried Lilly around throughout the day.

And in a short week, Sears’ brush with parenthood taught her an important lesson: She’s not ready to be a mom. Good thing she could send this baby back where it came from.

Sears was among the students at Aliso High School in Reseda who were given an all-too-realistic taste of parenthood with a computerized doll programmed to cry just like a real baby at random hours of the day and night.

“The first day the students get the doll, they are ecstatically happy,” said Sharon Simon, who teaches the parenting class. “Then the first night, they are tired. By the third day, they want to give it back. By the sixth day, most are on the verge of breaking.”

Before Baby Think It Over came along, students would carry sacks of flour for their simulated glimpse of parenthood.

The computerized doll cries until the student inserts a key inside a small hole in the baby’s back. Students must hold the key in place until the doll stops crying, which is anywhere from five to 35 minutes.

To pass the parenting-class project, students have to provide around-the-clock care for the doll and document the baby’s schedule for that week.

“It wasn’t just a doll to me,” said Sears, one of the first students assigned to the class project. “She was my little Lilly.”

But for others at the continuation high school, caring for a newborn had no deeper meaning beyond completing a homework assignment.

“I just did it so I wouldn’t get a bad grade,” said Tina Pedrin, 15, who named the baby Chuckie, but often referred to the doll as it. “But it definitely served its purpose.”

Students were given a set of clothes, a diaper bag, car seat and stroller. They had to take the baby to every class and bring it along when they socialized with friends.

“That was the most embarrassing part,” Pedrin said.

Sears, too, found socializing with a baby a bit unnerving as well. She noticed looks of pity from people who didn’t know at first that the baby she carried was a doll.

“People looked at me funny,” she said, “like I was too young to have a baby. I felt uncomfortable, like there was a stigma.”

Simon explained that several factors--including the weeklong duration of the project--set the Aliso High program apart from others. Also, “grandparents” are brought into play. The student’s parents must sign a contract agreeing to pay for the $250 doll if it is damaged or lost.

“It’s a lot more effective than carrying around an egg or sack of flour,” said Simon, who garnered a $500 grant from the Los Angeles Educational Partnership to purchase two dolls. The class has educated students well about unplanned pregnancies, Simon said, and the doll “just brings it into reality for them.”

Pedrin and Sears learned that, no matter how cute babies are, parenting is hard work--too hard for a single teenager who wants to continue high school.

“It wouldn’t be fair to me or my child to become a parent at a young age,” said Sears, who had toyed with the idea of having a baby after she begins college. “I still have so much I want to do.”

Pedrin was more blunt: “I want kids, but I am definitely waiting . . . a long time.”

Of course the doll has severe limitations. It does not soil diapers, eat, laugh, smile or coo. The only feedback is silence or crying.

“I bonded with her in a 21st century technological way,” Sears said. “But I never got the real benefits of a parent, like the smiles.”

She did go the extra mile and borrow a strap-on baby carrier. Her mom also was enthusiastic about the doll and bought a beanie for chilly nights because “her little head was so cold.” Sears saved the beanie as a keepsake to remind her of the experience.

Students admitted that the most realistic part was waking up in the middle of the night to tend to the crying doll.

“The night stuff, I wasn’t prepared for that,” Sears said. “I had no idea the word schedule would disappear.”

Overwhelmed students typically turned grouchy during the project because of sleep deprivation.

“And they weren’t even experiencing postpartum” stress, Simon joked.

Grandparents also got a taste of what teen parents endure.

Liane Sears said there were times when her daughter was so wiped out she didn’t wake up when the doll cried. “I am just glad it is a doll and not the real thing. “