what's not so i just decided to stay and yeah well a wise man once said it's not a choice of you know given the chance to choose you know i mean i was i really don't know it's like at first i wasn't you know because i was like i wasn't going to have you know have sex role my age but then for a long really wasn't paying i actually think that overall teenagers are making really good choices and in every group in every population there are people that are making good choices and people that aren't the thing that i really feel is that teenagers are making their own choices and it's not going to be the same for everybody  some teenagers are going to choose to be sexually active some of them are going to choose to wait either until they're married or until they're in some committed relationship or just until some age when they decide this is the time that i'm ready to have sex well the kind of data that we have about youth and choosing to have sex a really good resource is from minnesota students survey and this survey is given to students in seventh grade ninth grade and twelfth grade every three years and one of the questions among many questions that they asked the ninth and twelfth graders is have you ever had sex before and what we know from this data that we consider to be reliable is about fifty one percent of high school seniors in the state of minnesota report that they have not had sex a lot of teenagers are sexually active and don't really feel like it has a negative consequence on their lives they're in a good committed relationship with somebody they really care about they're being safe they're using protection and it has an impact maybe an emotional impact that might bring them closer to their partner or might not but overall they feel like it doesn't have any sort of negative influence on their lives for other teenagers who are choose to be sexually active maybe before they really feel they're ready or don't get the choice of whether they're going to be sexually active or not they're you know raped or some way coerced into some sexual activity they're not comfortable with that can ever really negative impact on how the rest of their life plays out the state of minnesota we don't have a comprehensive sexuality education law one of the things that's really frustrating is so much of sexuality education focuses on negative things and that is really important because there are definitely consequences if anybody of any age choose to engage in sexual activity however i feel that it's wrong and unfair to people to only talk about the dangers and the negative things that will happen if somebody is sexually active it's kind of up to the teachers sometimes it's up to the school board sometimes it's up to the principal of sometimes it's up to the tenth grade health teacher whether or not they want to talk about these topics on sexual health or invite somebody from an agency and to talk about it so it's very imperfect in that way because some youth get access to more information and some youth depending on the school where the classroom that they're and may not get any information at all sexuality education spends a lot of time on nuts and bolts and this is an s t d and this is the birth control pill but it doesn't talk to young people bought how to communicate with your partner about what you're ready to do what you're not ready to do and other aspects of your relationship well the first thing is you have to wait until the time is right for you and the time that's right for a teenager it's going to be different for every single one so it's so important to not go along with friends even up here pressure is really hard to avoid they have to decide to do when they're ready i think when so we have the important information we have a specific values that we want to do to continue to have i think i think young people have had those those elements in place to be able to take a decision in those one of those things is communication and being able to realize they're in that point in their life  well don't have somebody force you into it and make sure that both of you and your partner is ready for it in that you guys are on the same page on the same level i think it's like she did so actually educated in  people think we should like howard has sex it like having condos and being on birth control they need to just you know being extra careful you know you're also to education is stuff if they telling you t so hard niece more don't get pregnant with her when you get pregnant it's over research shows that young people are more influenced by their parents than they are by the media or their peers so i think it's really important to empower parents and let them know what a fantastic role they can play in providing education sometimes when they don't have the answer right away right away about a question that mean emerge right in but it's ok to say to  their kid so you know what maybe i don't know the answer to that these are a moment but i could come come back with the answer maybe use that specific moment to do research together and then use those teachable moments you know one the things that we always tell parents and guardians and families is that when you're silence about sex and sexuality that's also something a really strong message and that message is we can't talk about this or this is embarrassing even if you're under the age of eighteen if you're a minor that if you're seeking clinic services for things like birth control s t d testing and treatments emergency contraception pregnancy testing  and options pregnancy counseling that you can get those resources without your parent or guardians permission and that is covered by the minnesota minors consent law which says even if you're a minor you have a right to access those services and for those services to be confidential