To grow up as well as possible and to explore all her potential as a teenager, your daughter needs to be empowered to be strong and to soldier on. If you teach her how to say no to sex — loud and clear — she will be especially powerful. She is too young to put her intellectual and physical growth on hold. Premature intimate entanglements, however, can do just that. So give your girl all the tools you can to help her stave off society's and the teenage world's pressures in regard to sex.

Girl Courage

As with all parenting situations, give the sexual part of your daughter's development your best shot. Tell her it is in her best interest to concentrate on her number-one job: being a great student and participating in many extracurricular activities. Sex can come later; academic achievement comes now. Once she finishes high school successfully, she can have more freedom. For now, she should have as much fun as possible as a teenager and not burden herself with worries about birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, and the feelings of disappointment in herself because she was not strong enough to say, “No! I mean it!”