Welcome to the Neurotribe, the podcast where authenticity meets empowerment. Your host, Teresa, is a certified business executive and life coach navigating the intricate tapestry of neurodiversity. She's someone blessed with ADHD and dyslexia and gifted a widow and a mother to four incredible neurodiverse children.
So each episode of The Neuro Tribe is an intimate exploration of life, love, business, and parenting through the lens of neurodiversity. Subscribe to the Neuro Tribe on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube and never miss a story. And if you really like this show, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, and of course, share the podcast with anyone who needs to hear it.
Join us on this unfiltered journey where no topic is too challenging, no triumph too small. Let's unravel the layers of our community's experiences, embracing the struggles, celebrating the gifts, and finding empowerment and authenticity in every episode. And let's start right now.
Hey friends, welcome back to the Neurotribe. I am so grateful to have all of you here. I'm so grateful for all of you that comment and respond and send me messages knowing more subjects that you want me to touch on and talk about. Today we are going to talk about neurodivergent teens. This is a hot topic because there's a lot going on with our ND kids.
Just to give you an overview of what's going on, of course, you have the developmental things that are going on with kids and puberty and changes and relationships and pulling away. The teen years really are that time to pull away from parents and really start forming their own identity and what happens is they can form friendships.
And with those friendships, they are starting to develop new and different ideas. Developmentally, our teens are very much having a lot that's going on in their body. There are the Typical developmental milestones. There is that pulling away. There's that finding their individuality and their own personality, their own thoughts. It's also very common for our teens to all of a sudden see parents or caregivers as not perfect anymore.
And it's like their favorite thing to do to tell you all of the things that you're not doing right. Or how you suck. Yay. Go us. Also, with our ND kids, hormonal changes can also change a lot in the body. I've talked to naturopathic doctors. I've talked to doctors about this. With our ND kids
a lot of time we can have differences in our vitamins going on in our kids bodies. It could be. That the vitamin B is off, the vitamin D is off the ferritin and the iron can go off, the zinc and the copper can go off, and these very much can disrupt how our kids are feeling and how our kids are able to manage and cope with emotional roller coasters of being a teen.
You can also have a kid going into the teens and things at school might be more challenging. The social dynamic is very much changing for your teen and there could be this development of masking happening at school and therefore when they get home, they're more volatile. Maybe they're more tired and so they're sleeping more often Or they are just telling you that they need space and they need quiet.
There's also a lot going on sensory wise. When you're talking about elementary school, yeah, the hallways can get loud. But when you're talking about going into middle school, going into high school, those hallways can get Incredibly loud. There can be a lot of touching, maybe pushing and our nd kids maybe are not super into that.
So a lot of time I will see the coping of noise canceling headphones or using muting earbuds in their ears to help them manage those type of things in school. Also really being proactive and figuring out what's going on with your teen's blood work and what's going on with their food intake and how you can support them.
Maybe they need supplements or iron, that sort of thing. And, it's interesting because. I will have these conversations with parents. I will have these conversations with clients. And I do talk about nutrition. It's interesting because I've actually been called an ableist by talking about nutrition.
And I want to push that because our kids genuinely are needing a lot of nutrition in this time. This is a fact. It's actually a fact that kids that are in their teen years need more protein. It's essential for their growth. They are needing certain vitamins in their diets to maintain their physical and immune health.
And this is a fact. And so however you can find to help your teen with nutrition, there are some teens that are out there that as long as they have the information, then they will buy in. For instance, I have one teen that as long as I tell them what vitamins are in the vegetables they're eating, then they will eat those vegetables unless it hits their sensory needs.
I have other teens that they're just not into vegetables at all, but smoothie that tastes like a berry or tastes like pineapple. but it has some ground up spinach in there, they'll totally do something like that. I have other teens where they really have a lot of sensory issues, but getting them something like the Orgain protein drinks can be very helpful because it just tastes like they're drinking chocolate milk.
They really like that. It's got a ton of nutrients in it. And yay, go us, right? So for you it's, experimenting what works with you and what works with your teens and what kind of nutrition or supplements that they can take. Sometimes it's getting them a gummy vitamin. There are other people that just really don't like the sugar in the gummy vitamin and they would prefer a capsule.
Personally, I say stay away from sugar, reduce the sugar, don't give as much sugar, because that's also going to interrupt their gut flora and their gut health and interrupting their gut health also interrupts their cognitive and their emotional state along with their immune state. So these are all things that I can go on and on about, which I have studied health and wellness since I was in my teens.
And so I can go on that info dump on you, but for now I will pause. If you want to know more about it, please feel, please feel free to join the neuro tribe and we can talk all about the health of your teen. thank you so much. I love you all. Take care. Please like, subscribe, and share. Bye.
