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The Scarleteen Safety Plan

If you're in an abusive relationship, to make abuse stop you've got to get away and stay away. Here's help to do that safely, and to be as safe as you can before leaving.

Sex and Parent Caregivers

Depending on your disability, everything involving sex may require help – and if your parent is your primary caregiver, bringing up these topics (let alone asking for assistance with them) is not an easy task. It is possible to have a healthy and fulfilling relationship and sex life as a disabled person with a parent caregiver (or any other kind of caregiver). Here's a guide to help you out in this department.

I'm 14 and Want a Baby. Is That Weird or Slutty?

kenzieayana
asks:
I'm 14 years old, a very responsible one, at that. I've gotten in trouble with having sex in the past and now I'm thinking about having a baby. I understand that I'm too young but I know how to take care of one. I've been taking care of kids just about my whole life. But I'm just wondering, is it weird or slutty to know that I want a baby? I need help really bad....

Pregnant & Posting: 9 weeks

I think I feel more pregnant this week. It's amazing the impact that something the size of a grape can have on a person's body & life.

Parents: worried about sending simplistic messages about sex to teens? Then don't.

margaret
asks:
My 15 year old son has a first girlfriend who is a year older. My concern is that she lives with her dad only and quite often is home alone. My son has been there twice already and one time I made him leave because the dad was not home. I am besides myself about how to handle this. He said that he is not going to have sex with her but you know how that goes. I know what I was doing at 15....

How do I tell my Mom I might be pregnant?

bxtinej
asks:
My partner and I have been together for about 6 months now. He's 17 and I'm 16. We have unprotected sex sometimes, and I think I might have gotten pregnant. I won't be able to tell until next week, but I'm kind of crampy and bloated already. I don't know if those signs are too early to be pregnancy symptoms or not, but I have no clue how to tell my mom I am pregnant if I am....

Sometimes, knowing is the whole battle.

This is a guest post from Dances With Engines as part of the month-long blogathon to help support Scarleteen!

Scarleteen is written for young people of all sexes and genders. That they manage to do so with so much consistency and dependability is amazing to me. As I become more conscious of my own binary and oppositional language (men do this, women do that, and only men and women), I get more impressed with Scarleteen.

When I recommend websites to my daughter, or to friends with growing children, I am always questioning—is the language and mission of this site going to be inclusive? Is anyone going to be left feeling like they don’t belong or that someone’s wrong with them? I felt like that, growing up. There were so many reasons I wasn’t human, wasn’t visible.

Talking to My Daughter

Part of the 2010 Blogathon to help support Scarleteen. This entry is courtesy of Tess at Urban Gypsy.

If I earned a dollar each time I’ve heard the statement, “I’m surprised you’re so strict,” in relation to my parenting, I’d be basking on a beach in Tahiti now rather than on a Metro North train whisking me off to do a sex ed consult on the Lower East Side. I’d probably be doing sex ed consults in Tahiti; you can take me out of NY but you can’t kill my desire to help people learn more about their sexuality. But back on point, I can always hear the implied, “you with your pierced nose, tattoo, open marriage and non-stop sex talk.”

The funny thing is, my friends may have been surprised but my daughter was not.