Editorial: Parents Can Use Natural Opportunities to Talk About Sex

• "What if she really liked the guy, but he wouldn’t go out with her unless she did more and more?"

• "How do you feel about someone that young allowing someone else to touch her?"

• "It sounds to me like she had intercourse. Do you think she even knew what intercourse meant?"

The issues will just flow, and parents can learn a lot about their teenager’s perspective. The wrong tone or a move to rapid judgment or closure will help only the parent, not the child.

One of the best times to have a conversation like this is probably during a private car ride. The parent can discuss protection and how people make a decision to sleep with someone or to allow that level of intimacy. Toward the end of the conversation, the parent also can discuss their values. If they begin the conversation with their values, they risk the adolescent’s "shutting down" and never discussing mechanics, safety, or other issues.

Many of these events are shocking, and the child and the parent will not be ready to discuss them right away. It’s okay to "share the dilemma," which is what I like to do with older children and teenagers. A parent can say, "This is really serious and complicated. I want to talk about this more, but I need to think it through a little bit." Most kids will like the fact that their parents are still thinking about such an event, often because the child is doing the same thing. The parent can then go back and say, "Remember you told me about the sophomore who was pregnant? I have been thinking about it and wanted to ask you ..."

Some students are very good athletes in ninth grade and make the varsity sports teams along with a bunch of older students. We mix a lot of ages in high school. Natural things that happen – the parties, the drinking, the vulnerabilities, the dating – are very different between ninth grade and senior year. Will parents tell the athlete that he or she can’t go to the team party? No. But they can explain that there is likely to be drinking at the party, maybe even encouraged by the team captain, and can ask their ninth grader about her perspective on this situation, and her options. Parents can rehearse the likely circumstances and prepare their younger teenager to use his judgment more wisely.

All of us make judgments about sex, relationships, and related activities such as drinking and driving. We make these judgments about ourselves, our friends, and those in our broader community. We can help our teenagers by discussing what is happening around them, by listening, and then by sharing our knowledge, our values, and maybe most importantly, our dilemmas.

This column, "Behavioral Consult," regularly appears in Pediatric News, an Elsevier publication. Dr. Jellinek is chief of child psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry and of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. He is also president of Newton (Mass.) Wellesley Hospital. He said he had no relevant financial disclosures. E-mail him at pdnews@elsevier.com.