The authors emphasize that parents who have just learned of their child's sexual behavior problem may experience a wide range of overwhelming feelings and thoughts, including anger, fear, guilt, embarrassment, shame, loneliness, and numbness. Their feelings may go through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Parents need to understand the stages of normal sexual development from birth through preadolescence and how it is determined whether a sexual behavior is normal or abusive. The reasons children abuse others, the role and nature of treatment, methods parents should use to take good care of themselves, and effective methods for dealing with therapists and government agencies are detailed. Home-based interventions are also listed, including decreasing the opportunity for sexual abuse, teaching sexual safety and privacy rules, encouraging open communication, limiting experiences that increase sex thoughts, interrupting and redirecting the misuse of power, correcting faulty thinking, and staying calm. Lists of recommended reading and resources