By Shauna Scott Rhone
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Raising a teenager and being a teenager are among life's most challenging passages.

What do teens say about issues many parents may be reluctant to talk to them about? Today, in advance of a Saturday parenting conference at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, we begin a five-part series on what teens think parents should know about sex, drugs, self-esteem, violence and stress.

For the series, we talked to several area teens. We hope these stories encourage families to come together to talk frankly about teen life.

It can be a difficult subject to talk about, but nearly everybody thinks about it and most teenagers learn about it from the people with the shakiest information: their peers.

Sex, surveys show, is more common among teenagers than ever, and one result, experts and teens themselves say, is that it's treated as just a casual activity without serious consequences.

WEB SITES

• National Coalition for the Protection of Families and Children www.sexandyoungamerica.com • Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States www.familiesaretalking.org • Children Now and the Kaiser Family Foundation www.talkingwithkids.org • National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy www.teenpregnancy.org • Advocates for Youth www.advocatesforyouth.org

"I think sex is underestimated," says 18-year-old Stacy Tolos of Montgomery. "I think kids talk about it and laugh about it, but they don't take it seriously at all."

A group of students from Sycamore High School recently sat down with the Enquirer for a roundtable discussion about what it's like to be a teenager today. The six teens are members of the Northeast Community Challenge Coalition, a local organization promoting education. One of the topics they discussed was sex: the awkwardness, a double standard and a surprising attitude toward a particular type of sex.

Sasha Appatova, 15, of Blue Ash looks at discussions about sex as "another thing where you talk to your friends and not to your parents."

Ms. Tolos agrees. "I don't think many girls talk to their moms about it. I think for guys, it might be a little different. Guys are the ones who take the girls out, and I know that if my parents had a son they'd probably talk to him about crisis management."

Even if girls aren't approaching their parents, the females in the group all perceived a double standard of a girl's behavior getting more scrutiny than a boy's.

"One thing I've noticed is that guys aren't supervised by their parents nearly as much as girls in that realm," says Gretchen Bloomstrom, 16, of Montgomery.

"Girls' parents pay so much more attention. They always ask, `Are their parents going to be home at wherever you two are going together?'

"But as far as the guys go, it's like, `Goodbye, have fun.' They basically don't care what's going on. Guys rarely have curfew; they rarely have to call home.

"Society supports it, that it's the girl's responsibility not to take part, and that the parents of the girl are supposed to be responsible for that."

Nate Kennedy, 15, of Montgomery says his parents do ask him about the parties he attends. "My dad asks `Who's gonna be there?' and `Are his parents going to be there?' My dad's strict about that."

But Chase Jones, 17, of Symmes Township acknowledges his parents don't assign him a curfew. "My parents trust me to make the right decisions," he says. "I've earned it. Throughout all my life, I've done everything right, pretty much."

Some parents, who are in general skittish about broaching the subject, become unwitting participants in the name of "letting kids be kids." But what teenagers are doing isn't child's play. It leads not only to an end of innocence, but it threatens their lives.

Jack Samad of the National Coalition for the Protection of Families and Children, an organization based in Cincinnati that advocates faith-based values, conducted a nationwide survey for the coalition and talked to more than 1,500 teens about today's sexual culture.

"I saw a lack of innocence on three different levels" during conversations with teens, Mr. Samad says. They showed an "ability to speak without reservation about sex, ability to recognize (women) dressing in a more sensual way" and an ease in using "street language" when talking about sex.

Six hundred of those surveyed appear in the coalition's video, Sex and Young America, available online at www.sexandyoungamerica.com. The discussion on tape is frank and real, with teenagers talking about how today's culture has shaped their attitudes about sex.

"There's a humongous gulf between parents and teens," Mr. Samad says.

Another recent survey indicates the extent to which young people are sexually active and offers an alert to parents about where the sexual activity is taking place. Researchers at Child Trends, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit research organization, found that 34 percent of ninth-grade students have had sexual intercourse. That number rises to 60 percent by the 12th grade.

Of the 664 teenagers across the country who were surveyed in the 2000 study, 56 percent said they first had sex at their family's home or the home of their partner's family. The survey targeted those teens who reported having sex for the first time between 1999 and 2000.

Ignorance persists

A troubling misperception showing up in teen surveys involves oral sex.

In January, an online survey sponsored by the teen-oriented Twist magazine asked 10,000 girls about their sexual habits. Eighty percent said they were virgins but 25 percent of the self-described virgins said they had engaged in oral sex.

"It's a lot more common than people think," Ms. Tolos says.

The surveys show and experts say that many teenagers believe that any sexual contact that doesn't involve penetration is perceived by teens as "safe" sex.

"A lot of teens don't consider oral sex to be sex," says Dr. Frank Biro of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center . "They believe it's not a method of (disease) transmission, but gonorrhea and herpes type I and type II can be transmitted" through skin-to-skin contact, he says.

Dr. Biro, associate director of training in adolescent medicine at Children's, says adding to the danger is that most sexually transmitted diseases display no symptoms early in their onset.

"So you end up transferring (STDs) to someone else without even knowing," says Dr. Biro. "A lot of young adults are not using condoms because they feel this is a way of expressing that they really trust their partner. It's a weird type of situation, because it makes it more likely they will get infected."

What can parents do to help their children navigate safely through all the sexual images in the media? The consensus among the Sycamore students was that adults should open their eyes and be more attentive to what their teens are doing.

"I think parents need to be told, `Stop denying what's going on,'" says Ms. Tolos. "Stop pretending like it's not happening and stop being naÔve about it, because all these statistics are telling us that kids are doing this, and you're ... not doing anything about it. (Parents) are leaving their houses empty when all kids have to do is come back to the house when they're gone.

"They're still doing all these things that are promoting this activity. They keep pretending it's somebody else's kid."

Says Brittany Bagent, 17, of Symmes Township: "A lot of parents realize all the facts. They realize the statistics, but there are certain things that we don't feel comfortable approaching our parents about. It just may be a feeling of discomfort approaching us about it, so they just go and leave it up to us."

Put discomfort aside

Mr. Samad says parents should get over the discomfort and get educated about how to be better parents. They should feel "empowered to create teachable moments," he says. "Instead of turning off radio stations, listen to what they're listening to.

"If you see them watching something on television ... watch it with them. Ask them if what they are watching or listening to reflects their beliefs. ... Ask them, `How does this reflect what we teach at home?'"

Mr. Samad encourages parents to examine all the forms of electronic media teens are exposed to regularly. They contain the mixed sexual messages that can turn into those "teachable moments.''

"We need to find out why they use the Internet and text messaging," he says. "Open up your experiences to see who (your children) are. Ask them, `If you like to listen to this kind of music, would you have this music on if you're on a date?'"

Tuesday's topic: Drugs

E-mail srhone@enquirer.com