Is it okay to put your neurotypical, autistic, ADHD or neurodivergent teen on birth control?

Vids for Kids (and you):

• Birth Control Basics
• How Do I Properly Put on a Condom

GENERAL INFO EPISODE

Hi, it’s Amy with Birds and Bees and Kids and your sweet little kind of funky Just Say This podcast. Thank you so much for listening. My little numbers are going up and up.

That’s important to me mostly because the word’s getting out and if you need more help from me, birdsandbeesandkids.com, there are tons of resources. I do individual consultations. They’re called quickies because they’re 30 minutes and a deep dive, super helpful from what I’ve heard.

Okay,  commercial time, over. All right, big question for people. Should you let your teenager use birth control? Should you actively put them on it? So for me, yes, but for you, I don’t know.

It’s a family choice. It’s something you need to talk about with your kids. You need to talk about it with their other parent.

Sometimes, depends on what’s going on, but this is definitely something you should think about way before it’s relevant to your child. Here’s why I think it’s a yes. Kids, as you may recall, have sex spontaneously.

They get busy and they don’t have protection. They don’t talk about it. Sometimes it’s not a good situation.

Lots of times they’re making out. One thing leads to another and penises are going into vaginas, which leads to, say it with me, pregnancy. So I think that it is important to make sure your kids know what birth control is.

Everybody, I don’t care if they have a penis or not, everybody needs to know about all the different methods of birth control. The most effective ones are the Mirena IUD, that’s got hormones in it. It’s lovely because it makes your period stop and it’s good for five years.

Depo-Provera, that’s a shot. It’s not super recommended now. Patches, pills, the little what’s-its that get implanted in your arm.

All of those are really safe methods of birth control. Some of us have a hangover from the 60s, 70s and 80s, which told us that birth control was not safe. There were too many hormones.

It wrecked everything. That is absolutely not true. Every form of birth control is really safe now.

There are multiple pills a person can take, different kinds. It might take a minute to figure out what works for their body, but don’t worry about the birth control hurting them in some way. That is basically not a thing.

Okay, I’m saying that. I’m not a medical care provider or whatever. And of course, everybody’s body is different.

And so, maybe it’s not going to work for your kid. Okay, so there’s that little lecture about birth control. There’s a link to a delightful little Amaze video you can share with your kids of any age about birth control.

All right, so back to the reason I think this is a yes. It’s that spontaneous thing. No one likes a pregnant 14-year-old.

I mean, you love the child, but you don’t want them to be pregnant or impregnate someone. That’s why the penis havers need to know, right, about the pregnancy, because it’s brutal 24-7 from the time they’re 11 until they’re dead. Unlike female bodies, not so much.

So that’s the main thing for me. Also, if your child hates having their period or it’s really irregular, it’s really painful, birth control can make it stop. Does not harm the body at all.

You don’t need to take a break from birth control. Again, I am not a medical professional. You can do your own research, but it’s important that they protect their health and their sexual health, and that this is a part of their sexual health from the beginning.

Now, plenty of people, maybe that was you, took the pill because they had terrible periods. Double bonus, right? Periods taken care of, birth control, baby-making taken care of. And I’m super pro this, and you might not be, but I just really strongly encourage you to really think it through before you say no.

In the early days of my work, two things happened. One, somebody said, oh yeah, I’m putting my kid on birth control when they’re like 14, 15. And I was like, oh, I didn’t know that I would.

And then the other one was about letting their kids have sex at home. So I’ve evolved about both those things. If you do decide to do this, if you’re talking with your kid about it and you make the decision with their medical care provider, usually they need to be having a period for a couple of years just to make sure their cycle is doing the right thing.

Not always, everybody’s body is different. Consult with your medical care provider. Okay, here’s the other thing you should know.

If you’re like, hell no, I’m not going to let my kid be on birth control because it will encourage them to have sex. That is not true. It encourages them to have safe sex.

The studies are showing that they might wait about six months if they’re already on birth control, but I’ll take six months over not. Okay, as you can see here, I’m pretty passionate about this.

Your kid can go get birth control on their own. Depends on where you are in the world, but I think legally it’s like, I can’t remember 12, 13, 14. So if you’re like, hell no, or they can’t talk to you or they don’t want to talk to you, they can go and get it without your permission, which thumbs up, they’re taking care of their sexual health.

If you find out they’ve done that, that means a conversation, not a freak out. As with all of this, you can do your freak out on your own time. Okay, that’s my little lecture about this.

NEURODIVERGENT KIDS

Hello, welcome back to the neurodivergent kid and parent version of my Just Say This podcast. I’m Amy Lang. I help parents of neurodivergent and neurotypical kids figure out how to communicate with them about sex, love, and relationships.

You can learn more about me and get way more information about how to do this on my website, link down below. And then if you’re struggling with something in particular, I do quickies, which are 30-minute consultations. They’re super-fast, they’re deep dive, and I make sure you have a plan and resources so you can do what you need to do for your kid.

Okay, big question for parents of neurodivergent kids. Should you put them on birth control? And yes, depending. I realized that this is a, of course, it’s a family choice.

I’m also not a medical person, if you haven’t noticed that. If you listen to the general one, I say that 73 times, but there’s more detailed information about this and my perspective. But let me just talk about for you and your child.

I’m a yes, mainly because neurodivergent girls are very vulnerable to being taken advantage of. They can’t read social cues very well sometimes. They go along to get along.

They mask. They don’t understand what’s happening. Their peers may be doing a lot of pressuring around, you know, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend, having a relationship.

You, frankly, may not be talking with them enough about sex. Sometimes parents of neurodivergent kids, or disabled kids in any way, I just said that. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say.

But kids who are different, they have them, this idea they’re kind of trapped in childhood, they’re not going to need it. They’re not going to be capable of having sexual romantic relationships, or they’re not interested. And that thing can really get in the way of you supporting your child in the way they need to be supported.

So if you have a neurodivergent girl, I would seriously consider doing this. I realize that there might be medication issues. There might be just like your personal values.

But because of this vulnerability, I think it’s super important that you really consider this and make sure they understand what it is. There’s a link to a very wordy description of birth control, but I highly recommend you go read it and then chunk it down into little pieces. So you can talk with your child in a way that they can understand.

Everybody needs to know about birth control, whether they’re an impregnator or a person who can get pregnant. They need this information because it’s about health and safety. And if you assume your child’s not going to have sex because maybe they don’t have access to people or they don’t seem interested, you’re doing them a disservice and you’re putting them at risk.

And, you know, I want your child to have a really healthy sense of themselves as a sexual person, whatever that looks like. And to understand that protecting yourself from pregnancy that’s not planned is really important that you if you do decide to have them take the pill or patch or IUD or whatever method, that they understand what it’s for and what it’s doing. And so some neurodivergent girls really struggle with their periods.

They’re freaked out about blood. They have bad cramps. They cannot track it.

And so it’s a constant surprise, which, you know, for those of us who’ve had periods, even if you are tracking it, it can be a surprise. And so this is one of the things you can do to prevent their period from starting.

They need to have a period for a while before you consider doing this. Obviously, doctor talk, medical care provider talk, and that period piece can be hard. And so you can take the birth control consecutively.

So you don’t bleed, doesn’t hurt their bodies. And again, it protects them. So you know, your kid, right, you know, your kid, you know, your family values, and you know, that you want your child to be healthy and safe.

And I can’t push enough on the piece around vulnerability. And I’m not doing this to scare you. I’m just doing this to reality you.

And so the birth control piece, talking about sex, talking about consent, really clearly, concretely, having lots of conversations is super important. Right now we’re talking about the penis havers. Everybody needs to know about condoms with a neurodivergent kid, they need to have step-by-step instructions about how you use a condom, why you use a condom – do demos with a banana, or a cucumber.

Very clear description of how this works. And again, just fair, I know, I love a black and white thinker. And this person, I mean, kind of in general, it’s really easy to communicate kind of hard to communicate with, but I love the part where you can just be like, blip and say the thing.

Use a condom every single time you have any kind of sex. Right? Very clear. So, being very clear about that.

And you want to say vaginal, anal, oral, I know you’re having a little panic attack, because, yeah, you don’t want your kids to know about that. But they need to again, it’s safety, it’s health and healthy sexuality. Okay, there are some links down below for you.

If this has freaked you out, please let me know happy to do a quickie with you. And always sounds terrible and hilarious to me. And then what else? Oh, if there’s something you want me to cover, please let me know my contact information is all over the place.

And remember that you are helping another parent with this. There are no resources basically for parents of neurodivergent kids between the ages of like, birth and 12ish middle school. So if you have a friend or a family that you know, struggling with this, or even better, hasn’t like stepped into this universe.

 

Take care. Good luck. You can do this.