I've always thought the teenager of our species is somewhat like the honey badger. Kind of cute, maybe a little awkward looking from afar. Snarling, scratching ball of pure evil up close. Science tells us our kids are supposed to change as they go through puberty. Which makes for a pretty gargantuan task when you're a parent trying to figure out if your teen's attitude is normal pubescent behavior or a cry for help. So what if your kid's school offered to do a mental health assessment for you? Would you be taking them up on it?
I've got just enough conspiracy theorist in me to be wary of the big brother overtones of the offer from one Wisconsin school to screen incoming ninth graders for mental health issues. Do we really need our kids' teachers knowing such intimate information about them? Then again, I've got enough healthy fear of the teen years to think it might just have some merit.
Kids can and do have issues. CDC statistics show approximately 13 percent of children ages 8 to 15 have a diagnosable mental disorder. That's everything from depression to eating disorders, ADHD to panic disorders.
But this is the age when your kids change. Their hormones spike. Their brain chemistry is altered completely. I just finished Lauren Kessler's My Teenage Werewolf, part memoir by the mother of a teen girl/part investigative report into what makes teen girls tick. (If you have a daughter, plan to have a daughter, know someone with a daughter ... READ it, trust me. I'm saving it to read again when my daughter hits puberty.) As she says,
It’s like you get a free pass for the first decade or so. You don’t even have to work up a sweat. These are the years when Mommy is a saint and a genius, beautiful, and beneficent, the font of everything cool and fun ... I remember those easy days as clearly as if they were yesterday. Wait a minute, they were yesterday.
And then, snap. It's gone. There may be flashes of it. But by and large, it's snippy attitude this and OMG, you're ruining my life that. And somehow we're supposed to assess whether our kids are suffering a personality change because a) they're on drugs, b) they're being abused by an adult in their life, c) they're being bullied, d) they have a diagnosable problem, or e) none of the above. They're just a teenager.
A mental health assessment in the schools could take a lot of pressure off the parents who don't know how to approach their kids without setting them off. It could keep kids who need help from falling through the cracks. It could give parents who are concerned about their kids, who are wondering "is it drugs?" an inroads to helping them.
Would you allow your teen's school to do a mental health evaluation?
Image via C.G.P. Grey/Flickr