Sure I do. One of the things I've always resented about schools is the way they render our children completely unavailable to us for 6 hours of a day. Two of my three kids went to a school which had phones in the classrooms -- I could call the class direct. I called perhaps twice a year, but it set up the expectation that it was reasonable to have immediate access to my child. (Imagine.) I don't abuse it, and I give my kids the same sorts of instructions you do re: consideration of those around them and of their teachers and the learning environment. If they follow my instructions, I see no harm.

I'm an intelligent, well-read woman in her forties, and the only reason I know is because my grandfather explained a certain scene in the movie to me as a child. (He was raving about the beauty of the music chosen for a pastoral scene, I believe.) I've neither read the book nor seen the film... though now I want to do both.

I don't see this as one, or even two talks. It's an ongoing dialogue, that starts when the child is a toddler and learning the (medically accurate!) terms for their parts, along with eyes, nose, toes, and bellybutton. Many age-appropriate chats over the years, done in a casual and natural way, open the channels of communication so that it never is a BIG HUGE AWKWARD deal. It's just talk. I did buy my daughter a vibrator, but not as young as 14. She got hers for Christmas when she was 17, six years ago now. (And no, I didn't put it under the tree! I gave it to her privately.) My reasoning? I didn't see the Oprah show, so maybe this was discussed there, but for me, it was about empowerment and information. How can a young woman know how to tell her sexual partner what feels good if she doesn't know herself? We aren't assuming a teenage boy is going to know, are we? She was a *little* embarrassed, but not so much that we couldn't have a giggle over it together. "The gift that keeps on giving" is how she phrased it.