Ignorance blamed for local rise in teen STD's

That's the top headline in today's Dallas Morning News. It beat out Mardi Gras and the mental health of returning soldiers. Slow news day as best I can tell.

At any rate, a few quotes that'll wake you up quicker than the coffee:

"Some kids have a different definition of what being sexually active means," Ms. Royster (a bigwig at a local hospital) said. "For example, some girls will engage in oral sex and say, 'Well, I'm still a virgin.' But they don't realize what comes with that in terms of diseases."

After describing a situation in which she treated 10 teens who attended an "oral sex party," Dr. Laura Scalfano (another bigwig at a local hospital) said, "Half of all teens are sexually active. That's a pretty scary statistic for any parent."

Ms. Royster again: "And then we have the situation where some parents don't necessarily know how to talk to their kids about these things."

After a lot of "sky is falling" statistics, we get this from Dr. Janet Realini (a bigwig at a San Antonio hospital), "I think we have a long way to go, in terms of encouraging abstinence effectively."

One last one from Dr. Steve Wilson (a bigwig at Health and Human Services): "There is a concern among everyone working in this field that the message of safer sex or no sex has been lost on younger people. There seems to be a disconnect between the action of sex and the consequences of sex."

For those of us in student ministry, this isn't news. Like I said, it's a slow news day.

It just highlights the problem we already see: There seems to be a disconnect between parents and their children on how to talk about these things. Parents have no idea of exactly what it is they don't know. They need help, and don't know what to do.

*insert public service message for parents to grow in Christ themselves, contact their local youth pastors, and plug into a parent group to get help*