Excerpted from Third Base Ain’t What It Used To Be: What Your Kids Are Learning About Sex and How To Help Them Grow Into Sexually Healthy Adults by Logan Levkoff, Ph.D., published by Penguin Publishing Group. Excerpt courtesy New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The following excerpt is from Logan Levkoff’s vital new book designed to help you help your teens grow into their sexuality and help you understand what they’re going through.

Most adolescents (and adults, too) underestimate the importance of communication in a sexual relationship. When we cannot talk to our partners about sexual topics, we are put into a complicated situation. If we’re not comfortable talking about sex to a potential partner, how can we actually engage in sex with that partner? How can we ask him or her about safer sex? Past partners? STD testing? For these reasons, it is crucial that people learn how to talk to their sexual partners. This is not simply for health concerns. If partners cannot speak to one another, how are they to know if what they are doing feels good or how to do it better? Our entire sexual experience may be affected by how (and if) we communicate.

Talking about sex—aside from being central to a romantic relationship—is also a parental responsibility. You play a tremendous role in how your children learn about the importance of communication. Aside from giving them factual information, your ability to communicate with your children models the importance of ongoing dialogue in a relationship. If we speak up, they will speak up. And that’s the foundation for a healthy relationship, sexual or otherwise.

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Issue: December 2007