No, of course they're not. The U.S. has a major shortage of child mental health professionals, which means that school counselors, pediatricians, and probation officers are the ones picking up the slack. And while these people often do heroic work under very difficult circumstances, in many cases, what's most needed is professional mental health care. Which never arrives.

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"Hello?"

Many of these teens will then carry their mental illnesses through to adulthood. It's estimated that half of all mental illness begin by the age of 14, with up 75 percent of them occurring by the age of 24. Which means that by the time your daughter's on her third divorce or has lost her job thanks to her habit of pooping on people's desks, she might have been suffering from mental illness for decades.

Which isn't to say that parents are that great at catching and dealing with mental illnesses ...

This is a problem which appears again and again: Mental illness is tough enough to identify in adults, but in teenagers, the difficulty is amplified many times over. Is your child slamming a door one of the 3.2 percent of youth with borderline personality disorder, or one of the 96.8 percent of healthy teenagers who do exactly that anyway?

Oh, and speaking of self-harm ...

Gee, it's almost like we should treat troubled "emo" children instead of making jokes about them. How weird is that?

For example, studies have shown that bullying is strongly linked to adulthood obesity, and while there may be a bit of a chicken-and-egg kind of question about what's causing what, it doesn't stretch the imagination to think that the loss of self-confidence and isolation caused by bullying might not lead to the healthiest of lifestyles. Meanwhile, students who experience racial discrimination show negative physical effects, like higher levels of blood pressure and stress-related hormones. And there are a myriad of other health issues that go hand-in-hand with childhood bullying, like headaches, dizziness, and abdominal pain.

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They can't "stop hitting themselves" for long after you'd expect.

So if by some chance you needed one more reason not to be racist and emotionally abusive to children, you're in luck. And a piece of s**t.

And, OK, teens are dumb and reckless. That's hardly surprising. But that's what parents are for, right? To tell their kids when they're screwing up? Unfortunately, a similar effect means the teenage brain is hardwired to ignore everything that comes out of a well-meaning adult's mouth, with every sound effectively being reduced to a Peanuts-style "Wah wah wah."

When examining teenagers' brain activity while they listened to their mothers, researchers found that their brains shut down the portion responsible for emotional control and social processing. In other words, when you try to correct your child's mistakes, their brain forces them to tune you out.

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No matter how tight your rhymes are.

The problem is that teenagers' bodies don't release melatonin (the hormone which makes us sleepy) until a couple hours later than what's typical for an adult body. This makes it nearly impossible for teens to get to bed at a reasonable time, which in turn makes an 8 or 9 a.m. start to the school day incredibly punishing. As a consequence, teens are chronically afflicted with sleep deprivation, which leads to a whole mess of negative impacts on their learning abilities and general health. Our schools are literally making them dumber.

So if you are a parent, maybe let your kid sleep in as late as they want this weekend. And stop bullying them.

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And rapping at them.

Carolyn tweets like a grownup ... sometimes. She also has a daughter who jumps from and for the heart. You can donate to her fundraiser here, please and thank you.

Also check out 15 Reasons Why Young People Today Have It Tougher Than Ever and 5 Complaints About Modern Teens (That Are Statistically BS).

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