What You Learn When You Adopt a Virtual Baby

Before my son was born, my wife and I decided that we would try to adopt a virtual baby, just to get an idea of how much responsibility it would be. What we soon discovered is that it was a lot more responsibility than we thought it would be, and the virtual baby did not even compare to what is required to raise a real child.

It seemed kind of silly, really. The idea was that we would adopt a virtual baby that would cry, need changing, and need to be fed and put to bed and so forth. I felt a little odd doing those things to something that only existed online, and I was not really on board until my wife made it abundantly clear to me that it was very important to her.

At first, I thought, this is going to be a piece of cake. I was prepared for it, and even though it did take up a good amount of my time, I wanted to impress my wife with my patience, and I would very calmly get up and attend to our virtual baby like it was our own when it was my turn.

What we did not take into a account when we decided to adopt a virtual baby was all of the crying in the middle of the night that it did, and how sometimes it would continue to cry after we fed him or changed him, just like real babies do. It was hard to get used to, and at one point, I actually went over to the computer while we were sleeping when it started to cry and turned it off. My wife was thrilled!

Even though it did become quite burdensome when my wife and I decided to adopt a virtual baby, it was also a great learning experience. We finally got an idea of how much work went into taking care of an infant, and in spite of that, we decided to have children of our own!

It is kind of funny when I think about it. I love my children to death, and I have a virtual baby to thank for helping my wife and I to adjust to the idea of having a child. We never realized when we made the decision to adopt a virtual child just how much it is like having a child of your own, although it still is not as much work.

Looking back, I really believe that adopting a virtual baby was the right decision to make. My wife and I are both very patient with our children and really always have been. We got an idea about when they cry and what it is usually for, depending on the time of day, and even though I never addressed our virtual child by the name my wife came up with for it, I still felt a little sad when we decided to end our experiment in virtual child-rearing.