When a parent trusts you with their kid for a night, that’s a calling with a curfew.

Someone has handed over the thing they care about most and gone out, which is a bigger transfer of trust than the hourly rate suggests. The job looks like television and bedtime. What it is is a few hours of responsibility for another person’s safety, in a house where you are in charge. Small amounts of real responsibility are how people learn to carry larger ones.

Next time you babysit, treat the details as the job: the bedtime, the allergy, the emergency number. Put your phone down for the parts that matter. Then tell the parents the truth about how it went, including what went wrong.