“Teenage pregnancy is 100 percent preventable,” claims the public service announcement from one of the stars of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”

I have watched the show with my children. We’re hooked, and even though I now think it is more like a teenage soap opera, I continue to watch it with my children. It is just one more way that I try to discuss sex openly with my children.

I have never shied away from telling my children the truth about sex. If they hear about something, I answer, and I answer completely even if it is my 10-year-old son asking what “friends with benefits” means (thanks to Sheldon in Big Bang Theory).

And I am the parent of teenagers, and I know sometime in the near future, my kids will become sexually active. It isn’t something I want, but it is a fact that I must deal with. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “the percentage of high school students who have had sexual intercourse increases by grade. In 2003, 62 percent of 12th graders had had sexual intercourse, compared with 33 percent of 9th graders.”

I have two high school students, and those statistics are scary. I want my children to be the exception. I want my children to be in the 38 percent of 12th graders who haven’t had sexual intercourse, but I know the reality. I wasn’t a virgin when I graduated from high school although my best friend was a virgin. But even if my children are a virgin when they graduate, the amount of time until they do decide to be sexually active is dwindling.

As a mom, I want to know what I can do and should do to help my children. Ideally, I want my children to abstain. But I know what it is like to be a teen girl. I know how convincing teen boys can be, and I know that it is hard to say no because it isn’t just the teenage boy that wants to have sex.

And so as a mom, I am left waiting. I hope my children say no, and I hope if my children decide not to say no that they turn to me for advice and help.

I try to figure out what role, if any, birth control pills should play in this stage of my children’s life. I don’t want my children to have to deal with pregnancy when they are teens. But is getting birth control a preventive method or parental permission? I don’t want it to be permission, but could it mistakenly be interpreted that way?

And every day, I hear stories of other kids. A girl that used to come over to our house for sleepovers is now pregnant. She is 15, due in March, and engaged to the baby’s father, another 15 year old. The pair are excited about the wedding and the nuptuals, and I can’t figure out what the parents failed to do that allowed this to happen. And I think about the marriage that will happen, and I wonder what will happen when playing house becomes reality. Yesterday, I wondered about the legalities of a 15-year-old signing papers for their own child. Can they?

And yesterday, I sat down next to my child. She was on the computer and having an instant messaging conversation with another girl that I have known since she was in kindergarten. The girl’s 15, and her older sister is a teenage mom. The conversation started with the girl telling my daughter, “I’m horrible.”

My daughter asked why, the girl said she’d been bad, and my daughter asked what she did. The girl responded with the comment that she had given her boyfriend an “hj,” and he had wandering fingers as well. (That is as polite a way as I can put what she typed to my daughter.)

My daughter had no idea this was about to come across her computer screen, and the girl didn’t know I was reading the IM conversation. And I had to ask what an “hj” was, and both of my oldest children knew the answer.

The girl was told that I saw what she wrote. She was a bit mortified. I was worried. I passed on a few comments, nuggests of wisdom. She said she would talk to her mom. She also said she would “be smart,” and after a bit, she said she didn’t plan to have sex with a guy until she was with him for a while and she would use a condom. She said all the right things, and I couldn’t wonder why what she did with her boyfriend didn’t fall into the “having sex” definition. When does it quit being “fooling around” or “making out” and cross that threshold into “having sex.” And I think that is part of the problem. Teens don’t realize that what happened in that moment really is “having sex.” And how quickly that foreplay stuff becomes more than they ever planned.

And even though I am trying to do this parenting thing with my eyes wide open, I am worried and scared.

Image credit: The dress in the photo above is made from 12,500 condoms and the story about it can be found here: http://gizmodo.com/219001/wedding-gown-made-of-12500-condoms