Psssst ... hey, parents: Have a defiant teen who keeps you awake nights? A toddler who won’t stop screaming? A middle schooler with a surly attitude?

Head for Nebraska! There, you can leave your child at the door of a hospital. Relinquish custody. You won’t be arrested for abandonment. Bye-bye, problem child.

OK, wait a second before you click “send” on that nasty e-mail you’re already typing to me. I’m kidding, folks! Just kidding. And yes, I realize it’s no laughing matter that in four months, more than a dozen people have taken up the state of Nebraska on its offer of clemency to worn-out parents who can’t deal with their kids anymore. This is profoundly sad, a failing of our social services system and the culture at large.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Nebraska simply was trying to catch up with the rest of the nation, as the last state to pass a “safe haven” law, which allows parents to relinquish children at hospitals without fear of prosecution.

The only problem: Nebraska didn’t stipulate, as do other states including South Carolina, that the child must be an infant. Its law simply says “child.” As in, minor. As in, anyone younger than 18.

Yee-ha! As soon as the law took effect in July, parents started pulling up to emergency room entrances in Omaha and Lincoln, with bewildered children in the back seat. A 13-year-old girl. A 15-year-old boy. Three nights ago, two teenagers were left at two different hospitals. A widower, overwhelmed by trying to care for 10 children after his wife's death, brought nine of them (ages 1 to 17) to a hospital.

Some desperate parents crossed state lines. One mother drove from Michigan to deliver her pre-teen son. Last weekend another traveled all the way from Atlanta with a 12-year-old boy.

(Nebraska’s governor says they will change the law at a special legislative session in two weeks but until then, the tide continues.)

Before we condemn these people, let’s be honest: Who among us, at least once during the long, exhausting years of parenting, hasn’t fantasized about giving our kid to somebody else? At the very least, for a week or two? Just a little mini-vacation.

We all get frustrated and overwhelmed by the incessant demands of child rearing. It’s one of life’s hardest jobs. Sometimes, we’re not up to the job.

In the adoption world, there’s something called “disruption.” It happens when a family can’t bond, for one reason or another, with the child they adopted. Maybe she came with medical and/or psychological problems the parents weren’t told about. Maybe he’s endangering himself or his siblings, with violent behavior. A new family is found, legal papers are filed and the child is “re-homed.”

Yes, you might call this selfish and short-sighted on the part of the parents. But the situation is rarely that black-and-white. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a friend, a fellow adoptive mother (a good mother, I might add), who recently made the wrenching decision to find another home for one of her children. Everyone in the family is happier now, she wrote, including the 8-year-old who went to live elsewhere.

If only such an option were available to biological parents. We might have fewer cars pulling up to hospitals in Nebraska.