Health Watch: Preteens and Sex Study

ATLANTA (MyFOX ATLANTA) - An eye-opening study about teens and sex conducted at Iowa State University found that children from lower income families report their first sexual experience at an average age of 12-years-old. A handful of children in the study reported having their first sexual experience at 8-years-old or 9-years-old.

The study is alarming to a lot of parents, but there are things parents can do to protect their child from growing up too soon.

"While you can't control whether your child has sex or not, you can set the expectations, and that's what is so important for parents to do," said Marie Mitchell, a registered nurse.

Mitchell advises parents to start the conversation from their perspective.

"We think they're just out there doing it, but it's meeting some particular need for this individual. Whether they think they've not gotten the attention or love that they needed, and they're just looking for someone to give them that attention," said Mitchell.

"While you can't control whether your child has sex or not, you can set the expectations, and that's what is so important for parents to do," said Mitchell. "Parents really are the number one influence on kids lives, I don't care whether they think they are or not."

Kids look to their parents for guidance. "You can protect them from a lot of the pain and the hurt they experience, if you would just talk to them about what you expect in a dating relationship," said Mitchell.

To try to curb teen sex, researcher say parents need to start teaching kids health decision-making skills in late elementary school. Dr. Melissa Kottke says in her experience, kids crave talking about sex, not just about the risks involved, but the emotions they're feeling and the pressures they're facing.

"I think communication is absolutely key and it's something that should happen every single day between parent and child, and you don't have to communicate about sex every single day, but to use obvious opportunities, when you see something in the news say, 'what do you think about that? Do you think that's OK? Do you think that's normal?'" said Kottke.