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"You're not their friend," she said. "When they're 25 years old, you're their friend. You're their teacher.

"Parents need to say to kids, 'I'm not only available, but I recognize that life in this arena is really difficult.' If a kid knows their parent is their number one advocate, any kid will respond."

During a community forum at 7 p.m. Feb. 7 at Peterman Auditorium, the nationally renowned speaker will touch base with local teens and parents as she broaches the topic of teen sex.

In 2002, Meeker wrote "Epidemic: How teen sex is killing our kids," which garnered national acclaim and inspired then-"Today Show" host Katie Couric to feature the pediatrician on her "4-1-1 Teens and Sex" segment.

Gary Bekkering, youth pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Elk Rapids, had shown teens the "4-1-1" video clips as a supplement to their sex education classes. He said many parents had expressed an interest in taking their children's education a step further.

"A parent asked 'Why not bring Meg Meeker here to speak?' " he said. "She was their doctor."

Meeker practices pediatrics part-time in Traverse City with her husband, Walter, and three others.

Meeker speaks about teen sex because she said it's "a huge issue in teenagers' lives." Print media and audio media stream a constant message about sex that is very confusing for girls and boys, she said.

The wrong messages about "safe sex" are propagated by celebrities, she added, citing an infamous quote from actress Sharon Stone in which the actress tells teens to stick to oral sex because it's safer.

"The time we're living in is very different than 20 years ago, where a majority of us as teens were only tentatively thinking about sex," Meeker said.

Statistics in Meeker's "Epidemic" book show that 50 percent of all high school students have had sex by the time they graduate and one-quarter of sexually active teens are living with a sexually transmitted disease.

Many kids today believe the sexually transmitted diseases they hear about are just a part of life, but back in the '70s, there were really only two well-known STDs, Meeker said. The television commercials for medications to treat these diseases perpetuate the myth that they are common and are no big deal, she added.

Prior to writing "Epidemic," Meeker began researching medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine. She used the information she found to make correlations to circumstances she saw in her own practice, she said.

She also began asking her kids questions. She was surprised when her daughter reported that many of her friends thought oral sex was safe sex.

"I felt disturbed as a parent," Meeker said. "I felt like as a generation we were bailing on our kids."

The release of "Epidemic" landed her "in the middle of a political firestorm" regarding teen sex, Meeker said. In the book, she calls herself a "reformed pediatrician" because she had been a proponent of the safe-sex movement for years -- handing out condoms and giving birth control shots to girls. She changed her view after seeing the amount of STD cases skyrocket in her practice.

When the effectiveness of condoms in preventing some STDs came up inconclusive in some reports, she said she decided she had to do something.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, if our "silver bullet" isn't doing the job--' " she said, referring to the assumption that a condom is a surefire preventive measure. So Meeker now travels the nation seeking to educate teens and prepare parents for "the big talk."

She said parents of her generation don't seem to have any kind of compass when it comes to talking about sex with teens.

"Teenage boys are the most ignored emotionally of the kids," she said.

If kids aren't learning about sex from their parents then they are learning about it from their peers, she said.

"You have a third-grader, and he'll go talk to his friends about sex and his friends will say, 'Oh it happens with a squirt gun,' or something," she said.

Meeker suggested that parents shouldn't divulge their entire romantic pasts to teens. Most kids don't want to know anyway, she said.

In today's culture, parents are afraid to do or say anything that might push their teens away, she added. Many parents don't know how to talk to their kids and tell them what not to do when they themselves made the same mistakes, she said.

" 'This isn't about you,' " she said she told herself. "Get over yourself. You need to do what's best for them."