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JUSTIN ELLIS October 8, 2007

Talking about sex with your parents can be like playing dodgeball in a minefield, disturbing and ripe with the potential for explosions and lifelong scars.

It's not that you don't love your parents, or realize what they are trying to do. But in talking about sex with your parents, you have to confront one startling yet obvious fact: Your parents have had sex.

Many of us would rather face an attack from wild badgers than acknowledge that fact.

Since they'd rather you learn about if from them instead of watching anything on basic cable, or worse, the Internet, it means everyone has to ride out the discomfort.

But would you believe the odds are high that your mom and dad feel just as awkward talking about "IT" as you?

This is where "Sex-Ed for Parents" comes in.

The classes are part of the "Real Life. Real Talk" campaign, which, as the name suggests, wants people to open up and talk about sex and relationships.

For too long, sex education has been confined to health class, involving weird plastic models, outdated movies and ironic pamphlets.

Over the next two weeks, parents from around the Portland area will meet up with instructors to talk, not about the changes going on in their bodies, but about how to be there for their son or daughter, recognizing good from bad on the Internet and just understanding what their teenager is going through.

Take Toby Simon for example.

Simon worked for many years as public-health educator on topics like safe sex, HIV and AIDS.

She figured talking about healthy relationships, and all the little questions that come up about sex, would be easy as a parent.

"What came fairly easily before, really talking with complete strangers, became a lot more difficult when talking to my own daughter," she said. "There's just so much more at stake for me."

Her daughter, Hattie, just started middle school, and Simon knows sooner or later they'll have to start wading into things like sex and dating.

Simon said she signed up for the sex-ed classes because she wants to be prepared to give Hattie the best information possible, but also to be open to talking.

Already she's learned that most parents need to accept that there is not going to just be "The Talk," but lots and lots of small conversations.

Simon said one of her concerns is that with so much information out there, she doesn't want to overload her daughter. In the end, it's about finding what works best in talking with your child, she said.

"I'm just trying to pace myself and see what she's ready for without getting her grossed out or freaked out," she said. "It's a process."

"Real Life. Real Talk" debuted in March, with the first round of "Sex-Ed for Parents" classes, as well as the performance of the play "When Turtles Make Love." The production, which examines how kids and parents talk about sex, is the work of the local social-change theater group Add Verb Productions.

Lauren Grousd, director of "Real Life. Real Talk" in Portland, says surveys have shown that despite conventional wisdom, young people do want to talk to their parents about sex and relationships.

It's just how it's talked about that gets tricky for parents, Grousd said.

Karin Anderson, an instructor in the classes, said most parents need to realize that times have changed.

Were they freaked out when their parents had the talk with them? Sure, Anderson said. But doing for your child what your parents did for you probably isn't the best approach, she said.

With the unfiltered flow of the Internet and increasingly scandalous TV and films, there are lots of places children can pick up information.

It's like comparing "Afternoon Delight" and "SexyBack" today.

But Anderson, the former executive director of the Maine Women's Fund, said parents need to learn that their children do want to talk to them and do see them as models, but that they are not looking for a sit-down lecture...