Starting May 26, 2025, and until June 2nd, all of our direct services, including the message boards, will be closed for an administrative staff in-service week. We also will not be posting to social media or publishing new content during that time. In the meantime, you can find help by accessing any of the thousands of existing articles, advice and other static resources here: Read Up.
We figure the best way we can help parents, and do what we can for the young people we serve to make things better for them at home, is by playing the middleman: passing on what we observe and learn from young people to parents, guardians and other supportive adults. Young people want you to know how they feel, what they need, and how they think you can do a better job with this: they just often don’t feel able to tell you themselves.
If you take nothing else away from Scarleteen Confidential, we feel these five things are the real guiding principles when it comes to parenting well.
Some of our favorite resources for parents to help them do their best with sex, gender, consent and sexuality in their parenting.
How do you support a teen as they recover from sexual assault?
In this series we pass on our insight including what we observe and learn from working with young people to parents, guardians and other supportive adults.
Many trans or gender non-conforming youth come to us looking for support they’re having difficulty finding, or don’t feel safe looking for elsewhere.
What do you do when you don’t like your kid’s new partner?
Our societies are chock-full of norms and ideals of beauty that shape how we feel about our bodies, and we all run up against them eventually.
Young people sometimes feel uncomfortable talking with parents and guardians about contraception.
Gender stereotyping is not just everybody’s problem, it’s a problem for everybody, and that includes for men.
Parents and adults are often quick to dismiss teen media, even when they haven’t personally read or viewed it. That offhand dismissal undermines young people.
The safer sex drawer normalizes safer sex, and ensures young people in your life have access to supplies they need.
What can you do to stay connected without becoming the main component of your teen’s social life, and how do you support teens going through breakups?
Dr. Karen Rayne has spent a decade supporting parents and young adults with well-researched, thoughtful discussion of sex and sexuality.
If you’re caring for a young person, then the question of when and how to have “the talk” with them has likely crossed your mind.
Yes, the adolescent brain makes impulsive behavior more likely. That doesn’t mean young adults don’t know what they want or what they’re talking about.
This is part of our series for parents or guardians . It starts with our big five guiding principles for parents or guardians and includes resources for those supporting teens and young adults . To see all posts in the series, click the Scarleteen Confidential tag here at Scarleteen, or follow the…
Help the young people in your life deal with rejection in healthy ways.
Bonnie Rough is thoughtful in addressing fears parents have about all the ways in which sex ed can go wrong and offers excellent ways to navigate those fears.
We encourage parents and guardians to have honest, supportive conversations with young people about sex and relationships. Because we know that can sometimes be intimidating, we’re always on the lookout for resources to help with the trickier parts of those interactions, which is why we were excited to read the recently released Sex Education for Boys: A Parent’s Guide: Practical Advice on Puberty, Sex, and Relationships by Scott Todnem. Scott chatted with us about how the book came to be, how to model positive masculinity, and the different challenges that come with raising boys.
