A few days ago, I dragged two large plastic tubs from the closet and dumped hundreds of photos on the bedroom floor.

These were old-school photos, processed from film, taken with a camera that you couldn’t use to Google or text. We had documented both of my kids’ earliest years with these archaic devices. I didn’t get a smartphone until my youngest was 5 1/2. Now he’s 13. His older sister recently got her learner’s permit.

We have officially transitioned into the parents of teenagers.

My phone has nearly 16,000 photos on it, having captured most of their moments since those early years. But that’s a digital task for another day. This time, I felt the urge to finally organize the contents of those two boxes. As I sifted through their newborn and toddler years, I heard the words a colleague had offered when they were babies.

“Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems,” he had said. He was closer to my parents’ age and had already run these gauntlets. Intellectually, I believed him. But in my heart, I kind of doubted it. I was trying to keep these two completely dependent human beings alive! What could be more stressful and demanding than that?

They say you don’t know what you don’t know, and they would be right.

I had no clue what my future worries would be because many of them hadn’t been invented yet! I had never tweeted or posted on Facebook or seen a YouTube video. Any concerns about “screen time” were just about a television screen.

Quaint, isn’t it?

I had worried about their eating and sleep habits back then, and I still worry about those. We kept an eye out for each developmental milestone and tried to protect them from physical dangers.

But now, I also worry about the things you can’t easily measure or see -- their emotional health, their inner lives. When they enter these vulnerable teenage years, you worry about their exposure to drugs and alcohol, cyberbullying, anxiety, depression, social media mistakes and digital addictions. You also feel like you have far less control over the problems your children will encounter. In some ways, they seem like toddlers again in much larger bodies -- risk-taking, defiant, moody and emotional. It makes sense. These are both times of rapid development and growth.

I wish I had been better prepared to understand what was driving my child’s changes in behavior and personality before we entered these turbulent years. Specifically, I wish I had read “The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults” when my daughter was 10 instead of when she was 15. It would have saved me some grief in years 11, 12 and 13. The book, by neurologist Dr. Frances E. Jensen and journalist Amy Ellis Nutt, helps explains why teenagers can seem so smart and so irrational at the same time.

The most startling part of becoming the parent of teenagers was my own confusion about whether their behavior was “normal,” and figuring out how to effectively respond to it -- how to protect them during these perilous years while still teaching them independence and resiliency. Teenagers are funny and insightful, and have moments when they can be incredibly sweet. They are just as often frustrating and immature, and have moments when they can be incredibly thoughtless.

You can’t help but wonder at times: Shouldn’t they know better by now? Why do I have to keep repeating myself?

That’s why books and articles about teen brain development are so reassuring and helpful. They explain, through biochemistry and biology, much of teens’ seemingly inexplicable behavior. And the science reinforces that parents should err on the side of caution when they sense problems. Teens are so susceptible to risks and dangers, and it’s best to intervene or reach out for help when they might be struggling. It’s impossible to shield adolescents from the mistakes they will inevitably make and traumas they will endure, but you can try to teach them coping skills to blunt the impact.

The physical demands of raising toddlers are relentless, and the mental demands of teens will test one’s sanity and patience. Now, I worry about having enough time to teach them everything we want them to know before they leave for college. Time moves so much faster.

It was reassuring to sit with their old pictures, the physical reminders of fleeting childhood, all around me. I separated their photos into piles and labeled the backs of envelopes. I discovered an empty baby book and album from when my son had been born. Filling those pages didn’t seem possible back in those sleep-deprived, exhausting days when I was caring for a newborn and a 2-year-old. A daily shower seemed ambitious enough then.

A week before he turned 13, I put together the story of my son’s first year. Granted, it was easier because he had far fewer photos than the first child. It was a chance to remind myself that we survived the “little problems” of his little years, and that we’ll weather the “big problems” yet to come.

Right before his teenage years, I finished my son’s baby book.

Just in time for the next chapter.

To teens who Juul:

Hey, guys. We thought this was an area where you all had us beat, hands-down.

For years, cigarette smoking has been falling among high-school students. In fact, it’s fallen to nearly half of what it was when most of your parents were in high school. Thank goodness your generation realized what a nasty and unhealthy habit it is.

But you all have latched onto e-cigarettes -- vaping or Juuling -- because you think it’s safer than the old cancer sticks.

E-cigarette use grew 900 percent among high school students from 2011 to 2015, according to a recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General. In 2015, more than a quarter of students in grades 6 through 12 said they had tried e-cigarettes, along with more than a third of young adults.

Adults didn’t really see this coming, but now we’re all talking about it.

We know that’s not a new USB flash drive. It looks like one, and it even plugs into a laptop to charge, but that device is a way to get a nicotine fix. You carry those pocket-size vaporizers and swap out flavored cartridges that deliver a nicotine hit without tobacco. We’ve heard about the kids who sit in the back of the class sneaking puffs while an unsuspecting teacher lectures. There are middle- and high-school bathrooms filled with vapor between classes. It seems like everyone is doing it, right?

After all, it’s so easy to get. You can lie about your age and buy it online, or go on Snapchat or Instagram and find someone who will sell it to you. We know there’s a local teenager running around like a celebrity, hawking cartridges. But think about this for a minute: Who is trying to convince you that this new kind of smoking is safer? Could it be the same people who will profit from creating a new generation of nicotine addicts? Why do they sell flavors like “gummy bear” and “cotton candy”? Who do you think they are targeting?

The younger you get hooked on nicotine, the longer you’ll be a paying customer. Some research shows that many teens believe they are smoking a “nicotine-free” product. The industry makes its flavored juices in a range of nicotine concentrations, but you have no way of verifying how much you may be getting. And nicotine isn’t the only danger.

There isn’t a huge body of research on the health impacts of vaping on teens, because it’s a relatively new product, having landed in U.S. markets in 2007. But we’re starting to see research emerging. Guess what? These e-cigs are far from harmless.

The vapors you inhale can affect your immune system, some studies show. Teenage vapers are starting to develop “smoker’s cough,” chronic bronchitis and bloody sores in their mouths and throats that are slow to heal.

More data suggests that e-cig vapors may also contain cancer-causing chemicals. There are hundreds of unregulated brands, and thousands of flavors. A cartridge of “juice,” the liquid that goes inside the device, can contain toxic metals, along with the nicotine, propylene glycol, solvents and flavors. Dripping or super-heating the juice can transform chemicals into toxic, carcinogenic ones.

Dr. Nadeem Ahmed, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at St. Anthony’s Health Center in Alton, Illinois, talks to his patients every day about e-cigs. He shared information about recent studies that looked at the lungs of smokers, e-cig users and nonsmokers, and found that e-cig users have a lot more inflammation and inflammatory proteins than nonsmokers.

The vapor itself, even without tobacco, causes inflammation.

Teens who vape are six times more likely to try cigarette smoking than those who have never vaped, research suggests. And Dr. Ahmed said that people don’t generally just abuse one substance.

It’s really hard to quit nicotine. We’ve seen our parents, our friends, our partners struggle to give it up. If you can’t make it through a school day without Juuling, your body is already addicted to a chemical. When you get addicted to nicotine, you can suffer withdrawal symptoms when you try to quit. That means you’re buying more and smoking more.

The teenage brain is primed to get hooked on chemicals more quickly than the adult brain.

A little more than a decade ago, e-cigs looked like the way smokers would be able to kick a habit proven to be hazardous to their health. We didn’t think it would become a way to threaten the progress we’ve made on teenage smoking.

We’ve been so worried about keeping you away from opioids or painkillers or illegal drugs that we didn’t think you would stumble into this nasty habit the way that you have. It’s not a good look.

It looks like you’re gambling with your health and getting played so someone can make a buck off of you.

A feel-good story about high-schoolers doing a good deed revealed a stark parenting divide.

I recently wrote a short piece about students at the St. Louis-area Ladue High School raising more than $80,000 for children’s hospitals as part of a months-long fundraising effort. I quoted the co-organizers, who talked about the long hours and passion they put into the project, along with a charity official, who praised the students’ teamwork and commitment to the cause.

For context, I included a sentence noting that it helps fundraising efforts that the district is “well-resourced,” located in one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the state. When the accomplishment being noted is a large sum of money raised, it makes sense that being situated in a relatively affluent area helps -- to some degree.

A parent, who wished to remain anonymous, responded angrily, upset that this detail was even mentioned. A parent of one of the teenagers quoted, however, responded with great appreciation for the coverage.

While we all want to believe our success is solely a product of our hard work and talent, most of us know that’s rarely the case. Many of us benefit from things we haven’t earned, like the circumstances into which we were born. Some parents are comfortable with their children seeing their accomplishments in that perspective. And anyone wanting to raise resilient children can teach them not to rely on, or expect, unqualified praise.

What was surprising was the reaction of the district.

Bailey Otto, a communications assistant with the Ladue School District, sent a critical email after the piece ran online.

Otto wrote that “the portion of the article where you reference the school district’s ‘well-resourced community’ using one of our ZIP codes is inaccurate. The district serves 10 different municipalities throughout six ZIP codes,” she said, and attached a chart of these ZIP codes and their median incomes. She added that “painting the district in such a broad stroke is inaccurate at best, and it denigrates the hard work of our students by suggesting that they did not have to work as hard to fundraise for the event.”

The attached chart did not offer a breakdown of the ZIP codes of the students who participated in the fundraiser, but rather of the entire district. The district couldn’t say what percentage of the fundraiser’s participants came from its wealthiest corners. Yet its own chart highlights how much wealthier the district’s students are compared to the rest of the state. Every ZIP code was higher than the Missouri median income of $48,173, with half of the ZIP codes showing median incomes of more than $100,000.

It was an odd data set to use to say, essentially, “don’t call us ‘well-resourced.’”

The most unfortunate part of the complaint is that it paints the students as victims in a story about their achievement. What a missed opportunity to talk about local economic realities and disparities.

Missouri’s most recent data indicate that 11 percent of students in Ladue High School are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the most commonly used marker for the level of poverty in a district. That percentage is among the lowest of public high schools in the state.

It’s not a stretch to say that raising the same amount of money in an impoverished district would be harder than in one of the state’s wealthiest. Should this logical fact take away from anyone’s sense of worth or accomplishment?

It shouldn’t.

When an objectively affluent district complains about a mention of its socioeconomic advantage -- even when talking about the ability of students to raise money -- it’s not doing the kids any favors.

Jill Farmer, whose daughter participated in the fundraiser, said she didn’t find the sentences in question unfair. While the district has more economic diversity than most people assume, “it’s fair to say kids with resources can sometimes tap those resources more easily,” she said. “To point that out doesn’t automatically deduct the hard work -- the blood, sweat and tears -- that went into raising that money.”

She shared a historically American value that those who have much ought to do much. So, when did wealthy Americans get so fragile?

It may have something to do with the fact that the haves and have-nots in America live increasingly segregated lives. Those comfortably in the middle class, or higher, may have an intellectual idea of what it means to be poor in America, but they have no clue of what the daily reality looks like for many families. How many of us from middle- or upper-class backgrounds have spent even one entire day in an “under-resourced” school -- one in which the majority of students cannot afford to pay $2 for school lunch, let alone commit to raising hundreds for a charity fundraiser?

Students from an impoverished district could spend just as many hours, with the same level of commitment, and would face a much harder challenge raising that sum of money.

The original story, which noted that this school raised the most money in the state, also noted that a high school in Carmel, Indiana raised the most money in the country -- bringing in more than $400,000. One of the organizers pointed out to me that the Indiana high school is far bigger than hers.

It can be easier to see the advantages that others bring to the table than it is to admit our own.