`Daddy, did Bill Clinton have a - uh - a relationship with Monica?" a friend's seven-year-old son asked him last week.

Tentatively, the father said yes, but asked the child what he meant by "relationship". "I mean - can I say it? - I mean did they have sex?"

Not a simple question, as both Clinton and Starr would agree, and not one this father wanted to answer in any detail. Irish parents are getting used to having to monitor the news for content as "inappropriate" as Bill Clinton's Oval office clinches with Monica. The Clinton tapes weren't the first time that our news broadcasts should perhaps have been X-rated. But they gave Annie Murphy's breathless revelations about love and the Bishop, the X case, the C case and other upsetting reports about sex abuse by priests, dads and granddads a run for their money.

The Clinton tapes weren't the first time Irish parents have found themselves choking on their cornflakes as they realise that even the most sober news broadcast has suddenly turned graphic. So should you switch off - or welcome the opportunity to use questions sparked off by such reports to have informative chats with the kids about sex, lies and how a man can bring peace to Ireland while being sexually reckless? Perhaps children are already leaving us behind. One mother asked her daughter if she had any thoughts about the Clinton matter. The 11-year-old girl (who views much of the world through the prism of TV and movies) said: "He shouldn't have lied under oath, but Monica, well, that was his own affair."

As to the affair itself: "He's soooo ugly - how could she? If he'd been in Independence Day, people would have thought he was one of the aliens."

Her 16-year-old babysitter had been discussing the matter with friends, and their first thoughts were for Chelsea Clinton. "I mean, having to go to college and know that everyone is talking about her father like that."

Were they shocked at his behaviour? Not really. "Wasn't there some survey that showed 50 per cent of married men have affairs?"

Not that they think they'd be tolerant of such behaviour: "If it was my husband - or father - I'd kill him." Neither girl had registered (or would admit to having registered) the graphic details.

The 16-year-old said she had quite deliberately avoided them, feeling the same repugnance for sordid details about stained dresses, cigars and the like as most of the American public profess. She reckoned most of her female friends felt the same way, but believed teenage boys might want to know more.

Nora Brennan of the Department of Education's Relationships and Sexuality Education support unit believes that, in general, parents and teachers can use material children have watched on TV to advantage, by using it as a starting point for discussions - whether it's Home and Away or the Clinton drama.

"It's far better that it's brought into the educational setting, into the classroom, than continue as a separate part of a child's life."

The Clinton drama, of course, throws up all kinds of complicated moral issues: Is lying always just plain wrong? Or is lying under oath about sex somehow more forgivable than lying about taking bribes? How moral is it to deceive a close friend by taping confidential conversations? They shed a bright light on the grey areas of adult morality.

Brennan hopes values like love, respect and care for each other and for self would be taught in schools (as well as homes), and that such programmes "could teach children how to critique wider social issues, and to look at humanity in a compassionate way".

The truth is, a lot of parents could benefit from RSE courses themselves to give them a language and a comfort in discussing thorny topical issues, especially sexual issues, with their children.

Marie Murray, senior clinical psychologist in St Vincent's Psychiatric Hospital, Dublin, and co-author of the recently-published ABC of Bullying (Marino), says TV can be used in a positive way - but she thinks the Clinton drama highlights just how unprepared adults are for the new way in which children learn the "facts of life". She is angry, too, at the way "news" has been so trivialised that we and our children are force-fed detailed information that we don't need about the private lives of public people.

"The question is not just what do we tell our children and teenagers about this, but have we even sorted this out and processed it for ourselves? I know that I haven't, and that many colleagues to whom I have spoken haven't, and that we are unsure whether to converse with our children about it - or if we should give it the attention it deserves and ignore it.

"I resent the way the content of our `news' items appears to be regressing in inverse proportion to our technological capacity to communicate it. We can now provide more trivia, more irrelevant garbage, more intrusive, voyeuristic, pornographic, invasive and exploitative information than ever before."

So what do we tell our children? "We tell them to beware the airwaves. We switch off the garbage. We protect the young from the exposure to ideas about sexuality and sexual behaviour that are inappropriate to their age.

"We speak to our teenagers about morality, friendship, betrayal. We ask ourselves what has to happen before we challenge the manner in which items that are newsworthy are selected and by whom. Finally, we sympathise most with one mother, Hillary, and one father, Bill, about what they say to their child."

There was a time when parents could be fairly confident that children under 12 weren't paying much attention to news programmes that most deem terminally boring. But now that the news has become a soap opera to rival the best of them, it may be safest to switch it on only when they're safely tucked in bed.