Until very recently, I've found myself unafraid of most things. Not too many things have ever made me anxious to the point of sleeplessness. No scary thoughts of death, tragedy, or disaster have ever evoked within me feelings of dread. Lately however, I've been bombarded with articles, television shows, and conversations on the topic of teenage promiscuity and pregnancy, and suddenly, life no longer seems filled with rays of sunshine, singing voices, and little birdies fluttering about. Suddenly, I'm terrified.

As you all know I have a 7 year old daughter (she turns 8 on February 5th this year). She is a very smart and inquisitive little person. She asks questions when she doesn't understand something and she is at her best when she has the attention of a whole room.

Before this week, I thought of these qualites as endearing and very innocent. Before this week - before the articles, before the conversations - I was not worried that my child's precocious nature could be the start of something I might actually lose control of. However, after reading an article entitled When a 13-year-old delivers a shock and watching last night's airing of ABC's Private Practice, where one of the character's 15 year old daughter becomes pregnant, I am now fueled by fear that my daughter could too fall through the cracks.

Society is making it increasingly hard to trust that our daughters will make the right decisions concerning their bodies as far as sexuality goes. Music videoes, movies, and even the latest best sellers all paint such vivid delusions of sex and what it is to be sexy. As parents how do we compete?

Though my daughter is only 7, I hope that I have begun to lay the foreground to a trusting and open relationship between the two of us. As her mother, I need her to love herself enough to understand that life is not about following what everyone else is doing, but rather about being an individual. Life is about making decisions logically for yourself, even if that means you have to go against what everyone else is doing. I want to be able to trust her and not lock her in the house for the better part of her teenange years. I need to intsill in her that love is so often complicated by feelings of lust and acceptance by peers, and that having sex does not make you sexy.

My children, both my son and my daughter, are two of the most important people in my life. To me, failure would be raising a son who thinks bedding females is a sport and/or a daughter who thinks she was put on this earth to entertain men. This is a battle I refuse to lose.