Maci Bookout wants to talk about sex, baby—about all the good things and the bad things that may be. But, you know, only on occasion so that her 15-year-old son Bentley doesn’t roll his eyes every time she attempts to broach the subject.

With her eldest set to turn 16 this fall—the same age the Teen Mom star was when she first got pregnant with then-boyfriend Ryan Edwards—Maci has taken to addressing the birds and the bees “pretty openly,” she told E! News in an exclusive interview, “and I feel, just at random.”

Not wanting to annoy her high schooler, Maci continued, she’s very cognizant of how frequently she brings up the topic. “I have to stop myself, like, ‘Don’t overdo it, don’t force the conversation,'” she explained. “If they bring it up, especially, let them guide it and when it’s over, it’s over. Let it be. Because you never want them to have any like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to bring this up because it’s going to be an hour-long conversation.’ Or, ‘We’re going to have to talk about this and I didn’t want to talk about that.'”

Her tip: “Let them drive it and you can help guide it, basically.”

For Maci—who also shares daughter Jayde, 8, and son Maverick, 7, with husband Taylor McKinney—having Bentley take the wheel means keeping any chats short and sweet, or at least not awkward AF.

“Sometimes it’s him talking about his friend and their girlfriend,” Maci noted. “Or sometimes it’s somebody bringing it up and afterwards being like, ‘Don’t you get tired of hearing about when you’re going to get a girlfriend?’ Or whatever.'”

Even a quick five-minute chat creates an open dialogue, she explained, so that should Bentley have a question in the future, he’s willing to turn to his parents and not just his fellow teenage boys and the Internet. Said Maci, “It’s really just not being afraid to have a conversation if it lands in your lap.”

Open communication is also a huge focus when it comes to her and Taylor’s seven-year marriage.

While the Tennessee-based pair have come up with a winning game plan when it comes to managing their squad (“We work really well together as a team,” noted Taylor, “especially with three different kids going in three different directions all the time”), connecting on a relationship level is a more advanced move.

“I feel like we’re still working on what a healthy communication routine looks like,” acknowledged Maci. “And who’s to say we ever solve it? Because we’re both hustlers, we’re go-getters, we’re stubborn, we’re competitive, we’re strong-minded. So that might be something that is just there forever. But I think as long as we’re continuously trying to figure out the best way to do it, that’s a win, in my opinion.”

And they did take home some strategies from their time in Colombia filming the third season of MTV’s Teen Mom: Family Reunion (Wednesdays, 8 p.m.).

“Truth be told, walking into it, I was like, Oh, great, we get to be away from the kids, be with each other and hang out with our friends,” said Maci of signing on for the experience. “Like, it’s a vacation. I’m not sure we were expecting all of the work we were going to have to do when we got there.”

But even with all the workshops and counseling sessions, their time on the beach proved to be fairly relaxing.

“Getting away from the kids for a little while, really helped us reset and realize, like, ‘Hey, we are on the same team,'” said Taylor. While it can be easy to get bogged down in the mental and physical load of shepherding kids from school to their various activities, removing themselves from that day-to-day grind, he said, “gave us the time to reset and reconnect.”

And, perhaps most importantly, remember that they really do enjoy each other’s company.

“I was like, ‘Man, we haven’t spent time just the two of us together in a long time, are we still going to like each other when there’s no distraction? When there’s no place to be or thing to do?'” admitted Maci. “And I feel like that was the reset button because I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’d hang out with this guy every day, he’s great!’ So for me, it was like, we’re definitely still there. I really like him, not just as a dad or just as a husband, I just like hanging out with him.”