Kids are just kids, and babysitters will tell you the hardest part of their job is dealing with parents. People are picky about how their kids are treated, but some can be just plain bizarre. An AskReddit thread posed the question, "what were the weirdest rules parents asked you to follow?" The question inspired more than 8K comments, which comes out to maybe a hundred stories. Here are a couple of examples.
"I had to change the kid's cloth diaper every 2 hours on the dot. The kid was 6. I assumed it was for some sort of disability or something, but no. His parents just didn't want to potty train him, and the kid was content with being babied. I remember just making the kid put his own diaper on and encouraging him to use the bathroom if he had to go. I never went back."
"A single mom once told me to use the bat by the door in the event the kids' father came by and tried to take them. That was pretty weird and uncomfortable."
You can see all the replies in the original reddit thread, where the top comment is a joke that inspired a poem, or see a roundup of the strangest answers at Buzzfeed.
(Image credit: Flickr user Tom Caswell)