Will you have “the Talk” before it’s too late?

Ah, the irony. Just when we get our heads around the idea that we're overparenting our kids into apathetic nubs, we find out that we're still underparenting in one crucial area. That's right, even after the sexual revolution, the rise in teen pregnancies, and the spread of HIV/AIDS, it seems that parents are still talking to their kids about sex far too late.

According to Time magazine (the same publication that brought to light the woes of overparenting just three weeks ago)-a study recently published in Pediatrics shows that at least 40% of teens ages 13-17 only talked to their parents about sex, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases after they had become sexually active.

The findings, while disheartening, are also extremely interesting for this simple reason: when asked whether or not they had talked about sex and sexuality, the parents and teens in 141 families enrolled in UCLA's Talking Parents, Healthy Teens program had very different answers. Specifically, parents believed they had talked about the issues- pregnancy, puberty, birth control and homosexuality-while their kids did not.

What's going on here? Could kids really be tuning out "the Talk?"

Not really. According to Dr. Karen Soren, director of adolescent medicine at New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, the answer is pretty simple."A lot of parents think they had a conversation, and the kids don't remember it at all," she says, adding, "Parents sometimes say things more vaguely because they are uncomfortable and they think they've addressed something, but the kids don't hear the topic at all."

In other words, you might be so worried about "the Talk" that you're not, in fact, having it.

So what's a parent to do? According to the experts cited in Time, the first thing you can do is to stop thinking of "the Talk" as the only talk. This is not a one-time deal, where everything that needs to be said about sex and sexuality gets laid out in a neat bundle that your kids can unpack for the rest of their lives. In fact, any talk should be a dialogue, one that changes as your kids grow, and takes into account what they are ready to hear at different ages and stages. Maybe your 12-year-old can hear about what touching means, while your 14-year-old can grasp the details how a condom works.

So how do you know when your kids are ready, or what to say? This video, which features family therapist Dr. Julie Rosenweig, can give you some good ideas if you don't even know where to start.

Most importantly, just get started says Dr. Mark Schuster, chief of general pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston, and one of the authors of the new study. "If you just get over the hurdle of starting, then once the conversation gets going, you often find it's easier than expected," he says, advising parents to "use any excuse you want, but just get over the initial hurdle and start talking to your kids, because it's really important."

Well, we knew all those steamy episodes of "Gossip Girl" were good for something.

What about you? Did you have "the Talk" with your kids before they became sexually active? If not, when are you planning on having it?