• 3,000 teenage girls become pregnant every day.
• A teen gets a sexually-transmitted disease every 10 seconds.
• The majority of people living with HIV got it as teens

For teens, not having sex has nothing to do with how intelligent, sensible, or religious they are. Neither does it correlate to how rich or educated their parents are.

For teens, not having sex is about overriding the natural state of their bodies and brains, and overriding their needs for self-esteem and acceptance so that they can not only say “No,” but they can physically pull away from the situation.

What parents can do:

• Stop thinking of it as THE talk, that it only happens once. Talking about sex – both as a physical and an emotional act – is a topic that bears repeating. Use your teens’ questions, as well as the news, movies, TV shows, and celebrity antics as jumping off places to keep the conversation going. Making sex mysterious does nothing to prevent teens from having sex – it has the opposite effect.
• Understand that teens have myriad reasons for having sex besides love. Most of them don’t make sense to adults, but make sense to the underdeveloped logic and decision-making processes of teens. (Remember the Teen Brain doesn’t finish developing until around age 25!)
• Teens with low self-esteem have sex more than teens with high self-esteem. Don’t put blinders on – if your child’s self-esteem is low, determine whether they need therapy, coaching, more of your time, or something else. And then give it to them.
• Teach your teens how to say “No” safely and with dignity. Just saying that sex is wrong, or that they’re too young or don’t know what love really is doesn’t really work. Neither does getting them birth control without teaching them that they can still say “no.”  Saying “No” for a teen is very scary – it throws their whole sense of being into question.

I will be presenting two parent workshops on how to talk to your teens about sex in April, with Birds and Bees and Kids educator and trainer, Amy Lang. If you are interested in finding out when and where these will meet, please go to my website, www.thegiftedteencoach.com and sign up for my free newsletter.