In parent education seminars -- once focused on relatively uncontroversial subjects like homework, sports, stress, bullying or even drugs and alcohol -- suddenly sexuality has become the topic of the day. The National Parent Teacher Association offers two sex education guides, one of them specifically designed to help PTA leaders help parents have conversations about sex with their children, well before high school years.

"Workshops on sexuality and education were very popular and people wanted more," said Alice De Normandie, president of the PTA Council of Pelham, N.Y., and chair of the Pelham PACT (Parents and Community Together) committee. That group is sponsoring a five-part series, starting this month, on topics including sex education, date rape, alcohol and sexuality, and STDs, entitled "Raising Sexually Healthy Youth," featuring a variety of speakers who are acknowledged experts in the field. According to data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted in 2001 by the CDC, 46 percent of high school teenagers in the United States have had sexual intercourse. Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, recently released a study that revealed that most teenagers first have sex not during the latchkey hours -- between the time school ends and parents return home from work -- but at night, at home, when parents are likely to be around.

The Rye, N.Y., City School District, the Rye High School Parents' Organization, the Rye Youth Council and a community-wide education committee, Heard in Rye, recently began a series called Facts & Chat to help parents talk to their children about sex. "The starting point of the discussion was how differently teens view sexuality from how we view it," said Kate Niehaus, co-director of the Heard in Rye program, and mother of three. The point behind these programs, organizers said, is to reduce the squirm factor that inevitably surrounds the topic of sexuality.

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