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.

Chocolate, it turns out, is a much better carrier for these microorganisms. Chocolate — no kidding.

A study done at the University of Ghent in Belgium found that 80 percent of chocolate-based probiotics pass safety through the stomach vs. 20 percent of milk/yogurt drink-based probiotics. The cocoa butter in the chocolate protects the probiotics, eliminating the need for refrigeration, for up to one year – No need for refrigeration.

Joseph Maroon, MD and author of The Longevity Factor: How Resveratrol and Red Wine Activate Genes for a Longer and Healthier Life, worked with Maramor Chocolates to create an entire line of chocolates fortified with essential probiotics. These chocolate bars are individual wrapped (just one per day) and are packed with microencapsulated probiotics. A single bar of dark chocolate is 80 calories; 70 calories for milk chocolate.

Maramor sent me two box samples of both the milk and dark chocolate probiotic bars. Once I read the fact sheet about how healthy the chocolate was, I expected to taste cardboard.

I was wrong; and I was surprised. The taste of this chocolate is very good; addictively good; and my kids are sneaking chocolate bars out of the box when they think I’m not looking.

I don’t mind the the security of knowing that at least they’re eating something healthy, which just happens to taste delicious.