I’ll never forget the night my sisters saved my life. I was 12-years-old. My sisters were babysitting me while my parents were out. They said, “Sit down, we’ve got something serious to talk about.”

I was a compliant little brother. But because my sisters enjoyed dressing me up like a girl, as I sat down, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to get all dressed up again. To my surprise, their serious topic had nothing to do with girls’ clothing and everything to do with what’s underneath girls’ clothing.

They pulled out a gigantic book. In our family, it was called the DOCTOR book; we only got it out when someone was sick. I started to worry, mostly because I wasn’t feeling sick.

They opened the book and showed me anatomically correct pictures of naked men and women. Then I started feeling sick. While looking at various body parts they explained the relationship between male and female sexual organs. I remember thinking “There’s no way this is true.” My sisters, one 17 and the other 14, suddenly looked much older and wiser. I quickly I was not the smartest person in the room (but I already knew that). They explained: “Mom says it’s Dad’s job to tell you about sex stuff. But Dad’s too shy to talk about it. So tonight, we’re telling you everything.” And they did.

At some point in their explanation that night they explained that a “rubber” was a condom and a condom was a method of birth control and that my penis could get big and send out little invisible tadpoles that could get girls pregnant. Suddenly, I understood several jokes that my fellow seventh graders had been laughing about the week before. My sisters were providing knowledge that was essential to the social life of adolescence. But maybe more than anything else, I remember them saying: “Sexual intercourse is very special. You only have sex with someone you really love.” That philosophy may not fit for everyone, but it’s worked out pretty well for me.

If you’ve got children, you should put your fears and shyness aside and directly discuss sex and sexuality with them on an ongoing basis. If you don’t, you can bet they’ll learn about sex anyway, indirectly and from other people, like their cousin Sal or a pornography website. Given this choice, most parents decide, despite their discomfort, to talk about sex with their children.

In contrast to what I got from my sisters, sex education in America is generally a crapshoot. With social media, the internet, and television’s preoccupation with sexual innuendo, it’s easy for children to absorb less-than-optimal sexual ideas. In a National Public Radio interview, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Andrew Hudgins spoke about his sex education from jokes:

“One of the things I talk about in the book [The Joker] is what I learned from the taboo subjects my parents never told me about: sex. So I learned about it from jokes and had to figure it out backwards. … It’s very much a hazard. And because you get a ton of misinformation, you get a ton of misogyny built into your brain at a very early age when your brain is still forming and it can cause long-term complications.” (from NPR interview, Weekend Edition, Saturday, June 8, 2013)

In contrast to Hudgins, I got lucky one evening 49 years ago. I didn’t get any misogyny built into my brain. Instead, I learned about sexuality and relationships from two people who deeply cared about me and whom I respected. I’d love to be able to clone my sisters into universal sex educators so they could magically educate all the boys in the world on how to respect women, which, in the end, is much more important than being able to accurately find a vagina in the big DOCTOR book of life.

Teaching children about sex should begin early. There are many natural opportunities for discussing sex with your children – including television, grocery store magazines, and, more often than we like, politicians who engage in questionable sexual behaviors. Other opportunities occur around ages four or five, when young children begin talking, sometimes excessively and inappropriately, about poop, pee, penises, and vaginas. Although addressing such topics with your children can be uncomfortable, you should begin this process while your children are still interested in listening to you. About 10 years later, when your children begin thinking about sex from a different perspective, they may be slightly less impressed with what you have to say.

Of course if you’d rather not deal with the issue, you can always use the approach my parents used. Just give me a call. I’ll put you in touch with my sisters.

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For more information on sex education and parenting, you can check out our Practically Perfect Parenting Podcast episode on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/practically-perfect-parenting-podcast/id1170841304?mt=2 or Libsyn: http://practicallyperfectparenting.libsyn.com/