1. | Sep 5, 2013

1. Have an open, honest sytesm where they trust you enough to tell you about their friends, boy/girlfriends, dating and what they are doing with their free time/when they are with friends or romantic interests. In high school, every single one of my friends who had a relationship with their parents like the one I described, waited. The ones who had parents without open communication (regardless of whether they were strict or permissive) did not wait. One girl with particularly strict parents still tells the story of how her boyfriend had to hide under the bed when her mother came home unexpectedly early he hid until it was late enough for her to sneak him out of the house.2. Have this be just another step in the sexual education. You should have been giving age-appropriate books (or having conversations but books tend to be more informative since parents often get flustered) all along. For example, my parents read me a Where do babies come from? picture book when I was 3 and my mom was pregnant. They continued giving me books about all aspects of health and sexual education where the material was at an age and developmentally appropriate level. Then they would either read it to me or with me, or let me read it on my own then check with me that I understood it.3. Talk to them but if you don't have the open and honest communication of suggestion 1, this is usually embarrassing. Try talking in such a way that they don't have to look directly at you, e.g. in a car or casually bring it up while baking cookies or playing basketball.4. Give them a college level biology textbook (we used this one Biology, by Raven) and have them read the chapters on viruses, bacteria and protists (which include many parasites). Believe me, we just went through those sections, and it is probably the best way to encourage abstinance (not to mention brushing your teeth, washing your hands and eating properly prepared food) that I've ever seen.