susiej/reviews

Busy little boys carry that hint of the fresh outdoors, mingled with the fresh, sweet smell of dirt. Then, there comes that inevitable day, when the sweet smell is overpowered by something much more omnipotent and sour smelling. Almost overnight, your little boy will take on the odor of a gym locker. With my first son, I found myself denying this first harbinger of puberty, by telling myself that my washing machine must need bleaching… or maybe it was simply time to switch laundry detergents.

While we can read books, and visit websites to find the proper words, the timing, and tact to use when telling our kids, that they basically “stink” – the truth is, we, as parents, need to get ourselves ready, emotionally, for the fact that our baby is just not a baby anymore. Before I could approach this subject with my child, I needed to get my heart and head wrapped around the fact I was now a mother of a teenager.

The second step, was to get my facts straight. How can I broach this subject without hurting my son’s feelings? What is the difference between antiperspirant, and deodorant? Is one harmful? Really? Can he get Alzheimer’s from the products I’m buying? To answer these questions, Unilever’s Don’t Fret The Sweat campaign has created an educational resource, with a panel of experts, accessible through their Facebook page, DontFretTheSweat, to not only answer our questions, but give us some tools that can help turn this into an opportunity to build confidence within our kids.

Unilever is ideally suited to arm us with the facts we’ll need to teach our kids about sweat. They are the leading manufacturer of deodorant and antiperspirants and maker of Degree®

Men, Degree® Women, Degree® Girl, Dove® and Suave®. The Don’t Fret The Sweat campaign’s mission is to ensure that parents and kids remain cool, calm and confident throughout the day – especially during life’s sweat-inducingmoments – like talking to your tween about Body Odor.

My husband is the one who eventually had the talk with our son – but together, our overriding concern was, how can we keep from hurting his self-esteem during this talk? Fortunately, peer pressure overrode all of our concerns. The boys in the class were already talking about their new deodorants. Suddenly, bottles of deodorants and brands became the latest “share” on the school yard. By then, my other “little boys” were asking when they could have their own deodorants. The turf wars over deodorant had started … brothers were stealing bottles off their dresser shelves and claiming them for their own. Suddenly, everyone in the house wanted to have a smell! The label, Degree® Men carried a lot of clout with my boys – I’m not a little boy anymore, Mom.

What my husband and I originally thought was going to turn out to be a sticky situation, actually turned out to be just one more “fun new discovery” for the kids. These are the kinds of stories real parents are sharing about the transition between tweens into self-reliant teens that you can find at Don’t Fret The Sweat’s Facebook page.

If you can remember that day when the sweet-smelling child of yours turned sour smelling – or if you’re dreading the day, share your story in the comments below. I’ll be giving away a $100 Visa gift card and a Don’t Fret The Sweat gift pack.

There are more chances to win. Visit the BlogHer Prizes & Promotions section. Please visit the Official Rules. Contest runs from 10/4–11/4/11.

Rules

• No duplicate comments.
• You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
• a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
• b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
• c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
• d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
• This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older
• Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail.
• You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

Tags: boy, health, products, teen by SusieJ
151 Comments »

Teens boys — are impossible to get excited on a Christmas morning. So, I was thrilled when I received a large box in the mail — a real Six String guitar, that is both a guitar and a video game. Power Gig: Rise of the SixString Guitar, the first and only music video game that uses a real guitar as a controller and teaches the fundamental skills of guitar playing in the process.

A game for teens that does not involve shooting.

Kids need more music in their lives… and playing music develops concentration and memory and sharpens hand-eye coordination. And according to NAMM, studies show that music enhances intellectual, physical, emotional, and social development.

While Power Gig: Rise of the SixString Guitar is “Teen” rated, the rating is due only to mild lyrics in the game’s popular songs we all know and love from radio play over the past half-century, from Eric Clapton’s Layla to John Mayer’s Your Body is a Wonderland.

To play Power Gig, all you need is the Xbox 360 system. The band kit comes with the game and the SixString guitar controller so you can start playing right away.

Tags: boy, products, teen by SusieJ
1 Comment »

One rare day, both of my boys (when I only had two) headed down to the basement playroom to actually play. Even more shocking, it was dinner time, the witching hour, and I was free to cook.

While I relished in this kid-free moment, when I was actually free to boil the water for the pasta without stepping over puzzle pieces scattered all over the floor in the kitchen, my youngest son, 2 1/2, declared that there was a squirrel in the basement.

“Ha,” I thought. What an imagination that boy has. We had large basement windows with deep window wells, and the house sat in a woods; so I assumed he meant he saw a squirrel in the window well… on the outside of the house. Now, don’t laugh — it could have happened; just a week before the boys did see a frog staring at them from the outside through the very same window. It could happen again, I thought. This time, with a squirrel.

I kept stirring and chopping, while he talked about the colors on the squirrel, what he should name the squirrel, and what he would like to eat.

Then, my son asked suspiciously, “Mom, is this squirrel gonna’ bite me?” At that, I quickly laid down my spoon, and ventured down into the basement steps to see my beautiful son sitting on the rug in the basement, face to face with a squirel. Inside, not outside, as I assumed.

I stood speechless, unable to think what to do. I calmly asked both boys to come upstairs to play with me while I cooked, while dialing Dad on the phone, asking “There’s a squirrel in the basement, and what do I do now?”

While I paced around and gabbed on the phone about options, my four-year-old simply grabbed a broom from the closet, and crept back down stairs and started chasing the squirrel with the broom. Stunned, I stopped talking and simply stared at him. Soon, my son had the squirrel cornered, and the squirrel scampered up the steps, where my two year old opened the door, and away the squirrel ran.

Not only do I live in a zoo, but my kids are the zoo keepers.

This story was inspired by the Parent Bloggers Network and Generation Next, announcing their brand-new product – iKnow Animals, Letters & Sounds. Created in partnership with the world-famous San Diego Zoo (where you’ll find Generation Next highlighted on the San Diego Zoo website as a featured partner!), this collection of media uses eye-popping graphics, beautiful music, and engaging video to not only help teach children to read, but actively involve them in helping the animals and the planet.

Tags: boy, kids, products by SusieJ
3 Comments »