It’s not all that hard to be a halfway capable babysitter. What takes real skill is achieving the kind of blatant incompetence with children that most people associate with convicted criminals or Phil from The Hangover. If that’s your noble goal, this guide is all you:
1. Leave the kids to their own devices. They’re probably fine. This goes double if what they’re doing involves fire or weapons or trampolines, or flaming weapons on a trampoline of fire, because too much supervision for kids is just stifling their creative juices.
2. Instruct them in the fine art of making prank calls, especially to the numbers on the “In Case of Emergency” list.
3. Throw those pesky “house rules” right out the window. It’s never too early to teach them that rules are meant to broken, and that rules are just like laws, and that a life of crime is its own reward. It’s also never too early to start planning bank heists.
4. Bedtime? Forget about it. They’ll tell you when they’re tired.
5. Let them eat whatever they want, particularly the things their mom told you not to let them have, citing “the brevity of life and the inevitability of death” as justification.
6. Eschew movies like Finding Nemo, which they’ve probably seen a million times, in favor of something they’ve never seen before, like The Exorcist.
7. Baking cookies is fun, but it’s even more fun to eat them all yourself and make the kids watch.
8. There’s nothing wrong with having a few friends over, especially rowdy friends that like to swear a lot and tell raunchy jokes.
9. See what kind of high-stakes, winner-take-all game you can come up with that incorporates stairs, electrical outlets, and cleaning supplies.
10. Don’t read them a story if requested. Make them read you a story, with three-dimensional characters and shocking plot twists.
11. Help them with their homework, by which of course I mean tape their homework to the wall and make it into an elaborate game of darts.
12. When you get them into bed, mention offhandedly that there’s a vicious monster under the bed summoned straight from the inner circles of hell that won’t hesitate to devour them if they so much as think about getting up in the night. Slowly close the door and whisper, “Good night… and good luck.”
13. Don’t clean up. It’s not like it’s your house.
14. Give them a scavenger hunt, where the items on the list are their parents’ valuables and the place to put them is in your backpack.
15. When the parents pay you, sigh and say things like, “I guess the babysitting business isn’t as lucrative as it used to be…” and “I feel like I should get hazard pay. Your kid has the dead, soulless gaze of a psychopath” and “The couch was on fire when I got here” and “Just so you know, I lost the dog.”
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