Back when Em was 10 years old, her best friend, who was two years older, decided to teach Em and her younger sisters about Grownup Things. Because the best friend was a devout Christian, this was limited to a discussion of periods: she unwrapped a tampon and dunked it in Em's glass of water to demonstrate how it expanded. (Which, for the record, is totally something that a mini Lo might have done back then, just without the devout Christian part.) Em and her sisters stared on in horror, still not quite sure what a period was if it wasn't something that ended a sentence. This memory (not to mention the rather vivid image accompanying it) came rushing back this weekend during the most recent episode of This American Life, "How to Talk to Kids." (We're both total TAL junkies and highly recommend downloading archived episodes to your iPod.) Host Ira Glass interviews one of the editors of the by-teens -for-teens sex ed website Sex, Etc. Not surprisingly, it turns out that while the bases may be shifting all over the place, parents still suck when it comes to talking to their kids about sex.

The biggest complaint is that parents are too vague: kids already know from TV that sex looks like two people rubbing up against each other, so when your dad tells you that "sex is when grown adults want to hold each other," well, it's no wonder they're turning to porn for a little more, er, detail. Unfortunately there's no consensus about the right way to talk to kids about sex. But given the horrific state of sex ed in this country (we can't decide which is worse, learning about sex from porn or learning about it in a school-sponsored "abstinence-only" class), that's no excuse not to try. So, how did your parents share the birds and the bees with you (if at all)? And how might you do it differently?