When Janine Smith talks to teens about the importance of postponing sex and parenthood, she gets personal.

        Ms. Smith, 23, of Westwood, has spent the last five years arranging her college education around the needs of her daughter, Tyela.

QUIZ ON WEDNESDAY

Teens are being encouraged to take part in an interactive national quiz Wednesday at www.teenpregnancy.org. This is the Web site for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

TIPS FOR PARENTS

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has 10 tips for adults to help their teen-agers avoid pregnancy:    1. Be clear about your own sexual values and attitudes. If your message is unclear or ambivalent, your teens won't listen.    2. Talk with your children early and often about sex, and be specific. Tell kids candidly how you feel and why you feel that way.    3. Supervise and monitor your children and adolescents.    4. Know your kids' friends and their families.    5. Discourage early, frequent and steady dating.    6. Take a strong stand against your daughter dating a boy significantly older than she is. And don't let your son develop an intense relationship with a girl significantly younger than he is.    7. Help your teen-agers set options for the future that are more attractive than early pregnancy and parenthood.    8. Let your kids know you value education highly. School failure is one sign of trouble that can end in teen parenthood.    9. Know what your kids are reading, watching and listening to. You might not like the messages in the media.    10. It's never too late to improve your relationship with your teen.     Sources: PSI and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

        That means scheduling Tyela's day care, missing classes when her daughter is sick and missing out on campus activities because there aren't enough hours in the day to work, go to class and be a mom.

        “Twenty-four hours is not enough time,” says Ms. Smith. She graduated this month from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in English literature. She's planning to take a year off and work before going to law school.

        Ms. Smith is an adult leader with Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's PSI (Postponing Sexual Involvement) program. To commemorate the first National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on Wednesday, PSI is encouraging Tristate teens to take part in an interactive national quiz at www.teenpregnancy.org, the Web site for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

Quiz focuses on goals
The quiz covers decision-making skills, the kind Ms. Smith and the teen leaders she works with try to teach students. Focusing on goals helps teens resist the pressure to become sexually active, she says.

        “When they look more toward their future, teens make better decisions,” she says. “They're not usually thinking about the future. They're thinking, I want this and I want that. They're not looking at their goals.”

        Ms. Smith was lucky: She didn't have to delay or give up on a college education after Tyela was born. “But I did have to go an extra year,” she says.

        The Children's PSI program is a partnership with Cincinnati Public Schools, says Christopher Kraus, who coordinates the program. Several other school districts in the greater Cincinnati area operate their own PSI programs.

        “The mission of the program is to create positive peer pressure to postpone sex,” he says.

Teen pregnancy drops
Nationally, fewer teen-agers are having babies, and that trend is reflected in Cincinnati. In 2001, births to teen girls ages 12 to 16 within the Cincinnati Public Schools district dropped to 273, the lowest level recorded since at least 1988, according to the annual PSI survey.

        The survey covers births at University, Good Samaritan, Bethesda North, Christ and Mercy Franciscan hospitals. Since 1993, the number of births covered in the survey has declined 30 percent, according to Mr. Kraus.

        “There's other evaluations in other cities with similar versions of this program that show it's having a statistically significant impact on delaying the start of sex,” Mr. Kraus says. Those cities include St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Exeter, England.

        Peer pressure plays a big role in teens' decision to have sex, Mr. Kraus says, but parents play a bigger role. “My interpretation of the research is that if parental messages about sex are unclear or ambivalent, then the teen is more susceptible to peer influence,” he says.

        Surveys show the program gets an 80 percent approval rating from parents. “They like that the message is coming from other places than the home, because it strengthens the parents' position,” Mr. Kraus says.

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