1. I babysat a boy who threatened to tell his mother I touched his privates if I made him go to bed. (He was 9 or so)….I called his parents and told them to come back immediately, their son had said something very inappropriate. The whole time the boy was screaming, “NO! It was a joke! Don’t call anyone!”…His parents were furious; apparently I was NOT the first sitter he tried this on. I refused to sit for them again. I feel bad that they never got to go out, but seriously. No way I was risking my ass.

2. Here’s the one that scarred me for life….I was babysitting a brother (9) and sister (7) who always acted out pretty badly….One night I was making dinner in the kitchen while they were watching T.V. in the living room. I had a clear view of them and could hear them arguing about what to watch. When the sister refused to change the channel the brother whipped out his penis, stood over her, and threatened to pee on her unless she changed the channel. When she called out for me he changed tactics and full-on smacked her in the face with his little wang. I just stood there, horrified, no idea how to address what just happened. I ended up telling him to pull up his pants and continued cooking. Because Jesus fucking Christ that shit was way beyond my skill level.

3. When I was 12 I babysat a 7-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy. The boy went to the bathroom and then started screaming for me. So I go in and his pants are around his ankles with his head at his feet, bare ass facing the door and he’s holding his cheeks apart….His sister walks up behind me and says, “You’re going to have to wipe his butt; he can’t do it right.”…I wiped the kid’s butt and when the parents came home they were all, “Oh we’re so sorry we forgot to tell you!”

4. I babysat for a single mom down the road. She was going out with her new BF. Cute, great 5-year-old boy, though very timid. I myself was 15 at the time….He gets up and runs over to grab some scissors and runs back. I say “hold up slow down, you shouldn’t run with those it’s bad and dangerous.” He instantly drops the scissors and starts sobbing, turns around and defeatedly heads toward the kitchen….I’m completely baffled and follow him to the kitchen. I say I’m confused and what’s going on? He points to a drawer and through sobs over 20 seconds he manages to struggle out, “it’s (sob) in (sob) there.” It’s a silverware drawer, but prominent on the top is a large knife, which I can see some flecks of blood on. I turn around to him and he’s taken his pants off. On his legs I see countless cuts, some scars looking years old, some only a day or two old….I close the drawer and kneel down and tell him I’m so sorry I would never hurt him and to put his pants back on….

I say I need to make a quick call, but I’ll be right around the corner and back ASAP. He agrees, and I call the cops….I decide to deadbolt all the doors just in case….Lucky for me, too, because mom gets home before the cops….I go to the door and tell her she’s not getting in until the cops arrive. She freaks out, screams at me, and is pounding in the door yelling to be let in, ordering the kid to let her in or “it’ll happen.” …

Just as she grabs a brick and approaches a window, the cops pull in. She drops the brick and goes to them in hysterics, claiming I threatened to hurt her boy and I’m doing terrible things….Cops converse and tell me I’m going to be cuffed and put in the cruiser until medical services get there to inspect the child….Medical gets there, inspects the boy, I’m released with apologies and the mom takes my place in cruiser….All that and I didn’t even get paid.

5. I used to babysit a 4-year-old a couple times a week.…This is after a couple months of sitting him. He was cranky so I took him to his bed, suggested he rest, and he became enraged.…A few minutes go by and he comes downstairs very, very slowly. I ask him if he’s calm now and he nods. Then the smell hits me. I walk up to him, he’s standing on the last step of the stairs, and I can see he’s got poo on his foot. Upon closer inspection I can see there is poo all down his pajama pants. Oh lord. I look behind him, and there is a trail of poop that goes all the way up the stairs. The carpeted stairs. I go upstairs and find he had pooped on his bedroom floor and, of course, smeared it all over the place….He also threw scissors at me one time, but I would still take that over the poop.

6. My parents’ friends when I was in high school had two young kids. One about four/five and the other about two….I put them to bed around nine or something. The little one was fine but the older one ended up crying pretty shortly after. He came out and said he couldn’t sleep with the man staring at him. I asked what he was talking about and he said the “Indian man” kept watching him and it scared him. I tried calming him down but any talk of going back to his room sent him into hysterics. I let him lay on the couch with me….He makes a little squeal and covers his face. I ask what’s wrong and he says, “The man is standing behind you.” I was fucking terrified. After about a minute he tells me the man walked away, and he falls asleep within a few more minutes. When the parents got home, they said the kid has been doing this since they recently moved into the place and describes an older Indian-looking man with a headdress. I never babysat there again.

7. When I was in my early teens, my sister (almost a decade older) asked me to babysit for her coworkers, who had two kids—a boy and a girl, both under 6….Fast-forward to bedtime, and I’m sitting on the bed reading books to both kids. The boy suddenly drops his underwear, pulls out his penis, and begins playing with it. As the words “put your clothes back on” are about to come out of my mouth, the daughter reaches for my jeans zipper. I freaked the fuck out, slapped her hand away, jumped out of bed and screamed, “STOP THAT.” “I just want to see what yours looks like.” Nope. No. This is creeping me the fuck out….The parents came home and mom immediately began chatting my ear off….I follow her into the kitchen, and just as I had worked up the courage, she removes a spoon from a drawer, puts some water in it, puts a white rock in it, and begins heating it over the stove….Holy. Fuck. I’m like ~13, and this lady is gonna smoke heroin in front of me?…I said I was tired and got out of there as fast as I could, saying that I wasn’t feeling well.

8. I babysat this girl (8) who had her own iPad. She was into scrapbooking….So once when she went to get the picture out of the saved photo folder, she proceeded to scroll past 30+ pictures of naked women….She took a picture of me and when she went to show me, she flipped through a few pictures of her vagina….It was a very fun conversation with her mother.

9. Babysat/nannied for 3 kids the summer after my freshman year of college….One day the middle child ran off to play at the neighbors without telling me. Her mom and I agreed to “ground” her until the following day was over (a day and a half total)—she had to stay home/inside and clean her room….On that next afternoon about an hour before her mom was to come home and she was to be “ungrounded” she pulled a knife out and pointed it at me because “I was ruining her life” and “brainwashing her mother.” She chased me around the kitchen a few times before I just grabbed her arm and yanked the knife out. When I did that I was apparently “abusing her.”…The little shit was used to getting her way and thankfully I was off to my sophomore year of college two weeks later.