You conquered fevers, potty training, elementary school bullies and the beginning throes of puberty without a complete nervous breakdown. And you were this close to believing you had the whole parenting thing licked. Then you caught your teenager surfing porn online. Now you can’t even say the word “licked” without feeling nauseous and you’re wondering if the image of your bundle-of-joy watching some seriously explicit stuff is going to haunt you for the rest of your life or just most of the next decade.

Considering the fact that several national polls put the number of teens who regularly surf porn above the 50 percent mark, this scenario is bound to happen to even the most vigilant parents, so what do you do when you catch your kid looking at online porn?

Take a deep breath and realize you’re not alone:

Wondering about sex and looking at porn certainly isn’t a newfangled thing for the teenaged population. But the nudie magazines, late-night cable movies and erotic “romance novels” most parents remember from their own hormonally charged coming-of-age years are — forgive the pun — child’s play compared to the smorgasbord of sexually explicit movies and images available to today’s curious and tech-savvy teens.

“I think it’s going to happen with every kid at some point,” says Meagan S., a 38-year-old mother of two from Houston, Texas. “With the Internet, it’s at their fingertips and not hard to access like it was when we were that age.”

Meagan should know. Three years ago, she and her husband “crossed the Internet porn bridge,” as she puts it, with their then-14-year-old son.

“We got him a computer for Christmas three years ago,” Meagan says. “Checked the history two days later and found tons of porn clips he had looked up!”

According to some research, this isn’t unusual. In fact, a widely reported poll from England, which surveyed 1,000 British teens, found that the average teen spends more than eight hours each week surfing the web for soft-core porn and information on pregnancy, contraceptives, weight loss and plastic surgery. All told, the teens said they spent an average of 87 hours each year looking at online porn.

You know it’s normal but you still want to scream? Don’t overreact:

It may seem counterintuitive, but child psychology experts warn against taking drastic measures when confronting these types of sexual-development issues.

“It’s really important to not become unglued in front of your child,” writes Rage Against the Minivan blogger Kristen Howerton in a recent column about how to react when your child is looking at pornography. “For one thing, it will increase their shame … [and] if you seem too emotional or angry, they are also less likely to listen and less likely to share.”

When Meagan S. from Houston realized her firstborn was looking at soft-core porn clips she paused before reacting. “I was trying to keep in mind what I was like at that age — pure evil — and explained to him that I was disappointed in him but that I understood that kids get curious about stuff.”

Experts say Meagan’s reaction was on target. Overreact and you may push your child away and risk damaging trust. Under-react and you send the message that you don’t care enough and even approve of their behavior.

“I am not disillusioned enough to believe that a teen boy won’t look at porn or have sex,” Meagan says. “So why say, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ when all that will do is completely shut down the lines of communication.”

Provide perspective:

Many parents have the “birds and bees” talk with their child when he or she enters puberty and then decides they’ve done their job and that they don’t have to discuss sex again until, well, until never again.

But teens are hyper-curious about sex and just because you’re not bringing it up, doesn’t mean they’re not searching for information. In fact, in the British survey regarding teens and Internet usage, the teens polled said they spend several hours each week looking for online information about sex, pregnancy and contraception.

“[Teens] find it easier to go online to conduct their research than asking mom and dad for advice,” says Ellie Puddle, marketing director of CyberSentinel, the company that conducted the survey.

Being able to provide perspective to your child regarding what porn is and the difference between that and a genuine, healthy sexual relationship is crucial. Especially considering recent research published in the January/February 2011 issue of Aggressive Behavior, which found that viewing violent pornography can negatively influence a person’s behavior later in life: “Intentional exposure to violent x-rated material over time predicted an almost 6-fold increase in the odds of self-reported sexually aggressive behavior, whereas exposure to nonviolent x-rated material was not statistically significantly related.”

When she discovered her son’s porn cache, Meagan worried that her impressionable 14-year-old would start to think that these images of women were the norm.

“I told him that porn in no way resembled normal sex between two real people,” Meagan says. “I just tried to keep it in perspective so he won’t expect any real girl to look or be like that.”

Set limits and keep checking in:

You’ve worked hard to establish a level of trust between you and your child over his or her lifetime and you don’t want to totally blow it by setting a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime. In fact, punishing your child for viewing sexual images sets an unhealthy tone and inserts shame into his or her natural feelings of sexuality. Instead, set reasonable boundaries and check in from time to time to make sure that your expectations (no porn viewing until you’re a legal adult, my darlings) are being met.

In Meagan’s case, she and her husband decided that their son would still have access to his personal computer but there would be limitations.

“From that day forward he has had to use his computer in the living room or kitchen on a parent-controlled account,” Meagan says.

Back in England, where the polls showed that a majority of teens are surfing for porn several hours a week, parents have demanded that their Internet providers give parents more control over online content. As of December of 2013, three of the major Internet providers in the United Kingdom — BT, Sky and TalkTalk — have included automatic filters with their Internet packages. In BT’s case, new customers must actively choose to turn these controls off and can select light, moderate or strict filters.

For parents in the U.S. who want a similar level of control over their children’s online browsing, there are various tools out there designed to do just that. In a recent Tech Republic article, tech guru Brien Posey lists five apps to help parents protect their kids online, including K9 Web Protection, a free app that lets you block certain sites and limit viewing times; Family Cyber Alert, which keeps track of your child’s entire computer history, including his or her keystrokes and sent emails; and Anti-Porn, an program that works like a spam filter for concerned parents.

Even after you’ve installed the parent controls and had that awkward talk about porn and stationed your child’s computer smack dab in the middle of the kitchen, it’s important to keep checking in about these types of things. As a recent poll of U.S. teens pointed out, more than 70 percent of those polled said they actively hide their browsing history from their parents. It’s unnerving, sure, but it makes sense. I mean, think back to when you were 15. Did you really want to talk to your mom or dad about sex? Probably not.

Luckily, the Internet is not all bad. In fact, there are hundreds of excellent sites out there for the curious, sexual creatures we call our teenagers. Here are a few to get you started:

Sex Etc. — Written “for teens, by teens” and sponsored by the Network for Family Life Education.

Center for Young Women’s Health — Obviously, this one is geared toward young women, but it also includes information for parents and deals with a variety of health-related topics, not just sexuality and reproductive health.

Young Men’s Health Site — Just like the last site, but this time it’s all about the young men’s health concerns.

Go Ask Alice! — Sponsored by Columbia University’s Health Promotion Program, this site was one of the first question-answer health sites for teens and young adults. There are thousands of already answered questions about sexuality and sexual health, but teens can also submit their own question and get a thoughtful, well-informed and non-biased answer in return.