Bill, for some reason when I just read the ask about Ditto making good parents I thought it was asking if Ditto would make a good parent for human children. So now I gotta ask, would a Ditto make a good parent for a human child? Could I have a Ditto babysit human children?

The thing with ditto is that because they’re pokémon and not humans, they don’t fully understand human needs or society. (Granted, there’s always a possibility that there’s a ditto out there who does, but those are very likely extremely, extremely rare. And there certainly hasn’t been any documented case of such … probably for good reason, but that’s a tangent.)

So would they make good parents? Not really, no. They can provide basic care, but it’s unlikely they’d be able to provide the emotional support and general wisdom a human needs growing up and learning how to navigate our part of the world.

As babysitters, however, yes, most ditto have some level of baseline judgment skills that would allow them to keep human children out of trouble for short periods of time. Some might even be better babysitters than humans.

(Granted, why people leave small children in the care of teenagers is beyond me. Some of them can barely take care of pokémon.)

Bill. Remind me again how old you were when you moved out to the middle of nowhere on your own and became the storage system administrator of two heavily populated regions? —LH

Yes, but let’s be perfectly honest with each other, Lanette. Would you trust me with small, human children? —Bill

Fair point. —LH