Tricky being a teenager. Always was. Always will be. But now, apparently, it's worse than ever. Record numbers of teenagers are said to be suffering from stress, according to a survey by the Medical Research Council.

And some of it's our fault.

The main problems are said to be the pressure of all those exams and problems of self-image.

Cast your mind back to the olden days when we did exams. In fact, we might not even have bothered. You could get an apprenticeship and a decent future without a single O-level. For most teenagers the pressure was minimal.

And in any case, exams were private. There were no cameras at the school gates, no live television programmes, no radio phone-ins, no league tables. Not much interest at all, really.

Now it's a complete circus, with students expected to perform brilliantly with the eyes of the world upon them. And they have to look good while they do it.

Again we've increased the pressure, force fed them pictures of tiny, rich role models - often only young teenagers themselves - to set them more impossible challenges. Bad enough to be a lumpy, spotty adolescent - how much much worse when you're perpetually surrounded by pictures of shining teenage perfection.

And, while pushing them into grown up delights of sex, shopping, drink and drugs, we're keeping them younger longer. Now so many people are students until they're 21, it's harder for them to take any adult responsibility for their lives. They're stuck in a weird limbo.

And then we survey them, to tell them how stressed they are by it all.

Previous generations of teenagers went through first love, spots, rebellion and all the other problems much more painlessly - largely because no one took much notice of them. It's only since teenagers were labelled and targeted that the trouble's got out of hand.

So maybe that's the answer. If we want our teenagers to grow up more easily, maybe we should take the spotlight off them, let them grow up in their own way, in their own time, without making too much fuss about them.

Ignore them. They won't go away - but we might all find it easier to cope.

SO now driving test candidates are going to have a working knowledge of what goes on under the car bonnets.

Why?

Years ago when I had my first car - an appallingly designed Hillman Imp - I never went anywhere without emergency supplies of petrol, oil and water. I had a more intricate knowledge of spark plugs, fan belts and cylinder head gaskets that I have ever wished to have. I have fixed a fan belt with a pair of tights, changed light bulbs, fitted wing mirrors, changed tyres.

But now, except perhaps to fill the windscreen wash, I never open the bonnet. In any case, everything is sealed up and inaccessible and covered in Japanese squiggles. Lights and mirrors are super-expensive units. Other faults flash up cryptic computerised messages on the dashboard. And the last time I changed a tyre, I sprained my wrist trying to get the machine fixed nuts undone.

Cars are more sophisticated and complicated than ever. It seems a very odd time to expect us to be mechanics - even theoretical ones.

But maybe you can scrape a pass if you prove you know the AA's emergency number.

Cadbury's are launching a new scheme encouraging children to earn sports equipment for schools by buying lots of chocolate.

Kids have already had to stuff themselves with fatty crisps to earn school books through the Walkers scheme. No wonder more children than ever are too fat to run - they've been force fed to keep their schools equipped.

But eating chocolate to earn sports equipment seems particularly ironic.

Sensible schools will have nothing to do with this scheme - which is nothing to do with childrens' fitness but all to do with Cadburys profits.

Anyway, the main problem about sport in schools is not equipment, but space to play - now so many playing fields have been sold off - and time to fit in games in a timetable crowded out by the national curriculum.

And even Willie Wonka would have problems solving that one with a bar of chocolate.