It's Like Tyson Vs. Holyfield—Except They're Shorter. And More Brutal.

My daughters, Mari and Lila, love each other. I think. At least this is what I tell myself most days when the two of them are going for each other’s jugulars. Honest to goodness, there are moments when their knock-down/drag-outs feel like the ninth round in a primetime fight—sweaty, loud, nasty and brutal.

Alas, Mari and Lila are sisters. And this is what sisters do. They fight. They make up. They play. Somebody gets on the other’s nerves and then they start the whole thing all over again—usually precipitated by Lila, the little sister, doing something annoying and Mari, the bigger one, acting like the Earth is going to fall off its rotational axis if the 8-year-old Lila doesn’t get out of her face, pronto.

This bothers me. A lot. Maybe it’s because I’m a little sister and can say, with certainty, that it sucks – I know first-hand that it’s no fun when older siblings act like they don’t like you. But mostly because what mother doesn’t want her kids to get along? Through thick and thin, heck or high water, family is all you’ve got. You can’t pick them—or discard them—like you do friends; family is much more valuable than that. When you are hungry, they feed you. When you need shelter, family puts a roof over your head. When you’re sad, here comes a hug from someone who genuinely loves you and wants the best for you. You can’t always count on that with folks who aren’t your kin.

To see how I keep my daughters from straight killing each other, check out this blog post in its entirety here on the MyBrownBaby page at DontFretTheSweat.com, where you can find tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms like you and me are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing "moments."

Kid Networking At Its Finest: How We Teach Our Girls To Speak Up

By DENENE MILLNER

So there we were, my girls and I, strolling through the department store, drooling over cute purses and fancy shoes, when a sweet little old lady, for sure the most unintimidating person on the planet, smiled, said “Hello,” and then got to talking to my daughter, Mari. The kid had on a t-shirt featuring the logo of a local cooking school for children, which made Mari a walking billboard for the camp she’d attended just a few weeks before, and so it was only natural for someone who had questions about it to, well, ask questions about it. So ask, the old lady did.

Mari replied to all of the old lady’s questions with “umms” and “uhhs” and one word answers. She had a case of mumble mouths, as our family calls it. I mean, I get that my kid is a tad reserved and can’t always summon up the perfect words for every conversation thrown her way; she’s still a kid, and talking to grown-ups can be a little intimidating. But I do think it’s high time that this extremely smart, well-spoken, thoughtful 11-year-old start to exercise her networking muscles. She needs to figure out how to start and hold a conversation, answer questions thoughtfully and use her communication skills to get comfortable in not-so-comfortable situations.

Knowing how to talk to others, after all—whether on the playground, at a birthday party, on a job interview or at the office soiree—is a part of etiquette 101—as important, in my book, as using the right fork at a fancy dinner table or saying “thank you” to the person serving you. It shows not only that you have manners and a firm grasp of the King’s English, but that you’re confident and in control of your own thoughts and opinions and quite capable of expressing yourself—things that serve the most successful among us well as we navigate everything from the workplace to our closest relationships.

That’s why right then, right there, as soon as Sweet Little Old Lady got out of earshot, I ran Mari through the paces...

To see how I teach my girls to speak up and be heard, in this post written exclusively for Unilever's Don't Fret the Sweat campaign, CLICK HERE. For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com.

Ribbons in the Sky: Indulging My Kids' Passions (Without Turning Them Into Total Brats)

Lila and Mari, the beautiful dreamers

When I was little, I wanted to play the piano like Stevie Wonder and speak French and travel to far away places like California and Hawaii and Harlem. Alas, these things happened only in my mind. My parents, after all, were factory workers—bound to blue collar paychecks, limited vacation days, and a work schedule that stretched from sun up to can’t see. Lack of time, money and sleep meant I could be a world-traveling, French speaking, piano playing wonder child only in my dreams.

Of course, I hold no ill will toward my parents for this. But I promised myself that things would be different for my girls—that they’d grow up having known the excitement of exploring a new land, learning about new cultures, and, above all else, having their wishes indulged.

It’s not that I spoil them, mind you. There’s a big difference between caving to every little whim and coaxing and encouraging their love of something new...


To read about how I indulge my kids' passions to help build their confidence and teach them the value of trying something new, and to get great tips on confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing "moments," check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com.

Beyond the Parking Lot Mafia: How I Get What I Want—and My Children Need—From My Kids' Teachers

As we head back to school, my kids’ new teachers never really see me coming. That is until they make what they think is supposed to be a 30-second courtesy introductory call and get lassoed into a 40-minute conversation on curriculum, class structure, homework, discipline practices and the socialization of children. I don’t interrogate them, per se, but I’m very clear that I want to know who will be nourishing my kids’ intellect, character and mental and emotional well-being during the majority of their days.

Oh, I know—it sounds tough. But I promise I’m not a part of the Parking Lot Mafia of moms who cluck and rattle and get in a tizzy over what flavor cupcake the teachers served at the 6th grade play. I’m just the opposite – once I know the teachers and I are on the same page, I’ll walk through a mountain to make sure they have what they need to do their job effectively...

To find out how I get on the same page with my daughters' teachers so that we can have a great school year, and to get great tips on confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing "moments," check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com.

Tweens and Cell Phones—A Lethal Combination

By DENENE MILLNER 

There they were, a restaurant table-full of 11-year-olds in their glittered shirts and multi-colored sneakers and dangling neon earrings, holding their cell phones at arms length and making googly faces as the built-in cameras took goofy shots. Honest to goodness, to me, it was like a tween cell phone convention. But to my daughter, Mari, it was a deliciously brutal form of tween torture.

Mari, you see, is not allowed to have a cell phone. Oh, she’s begged, pleaded, bribed and prayed to the Good Lord Above for one, but yeah—no matter how much she claims it’s “just a gadget” and promises not to glue it to her hand and dial up friends willy-nilly, her father and I refuse to budge on this simple rule: no kids of ours shall have cell phones until age 14.

There is a method to our madness. First off, we see absolutely no good reason to add upwards of $200 in annual fees to our already out-of-control cell phone bills—particularly for a kid who makes, like, $6 a week for getting straight A’s. Second, we have a house phone. It works just fine—especially for 11-year-olds who just have to talk to their 11-year-old friends.

However, most importantly, we absolutely refuse to put a gadget that doubles as a ticking time bomb into our daughter’s hands. Sure, she can take pictures with it and call her girlfriend to talk about the start of school or even download a couple of games to play when she’s bored, but she could also unwittingly share her number with people who shouldn’t be engaging an 11-year-old, leaving her vulnerable to receiving explicit photos and having inappropriate, unlimited conversations with folks her parents don’t know, when her parents don’t know it.

I believe one of the biggest parenting responsibilities of kids this age is to slowly allow them more freedom, all-the-while controlling the risks. For example, they’re old enough to go to play dates and sleepovers sans their parents, but only at homes that have been properly vetted; they’re mature enough to go to the mall with their friends, but only with a parent close by; and, they’re savvy enough to surf the Internet but only when an adult is in the room.

What tweens are not ready for—at least not in our book—is a world in which they can talk to anybody, give their number to anyone, take pictures of anything anywhere and do all of that without our knowledge or permission. I think they simply don’t have enough common sense to detect situations that might be bad for them.

Of course, Mari’s girlfriends’ parents seem to disagree.

Still, Mari knows that even if she argues this until she’s blue in the face, we’re holding firm on our rule. After all, she’s the kid and we’re the parents and it is that way for a reason. One of these days, she’ll understand. Until then, call her at the house, thank you.

This post was written exclusively for Unilever's Don't Fret the Sweat campaign. For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing "moments," check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com.

Confident Black Girls

I get why my mother did what she did. When you’re overworked and way underpaid, and you’re of a generation that thinks kids are to be controlled, rather than reasoned with; and you’re afraid of having to deal with the cascade of hormone-driven adolescent problems that come with being the mom of a girl child, you search for silence. Demand it, even. Talking about tween stuff like periods and first kisses and confidence and beauty wasn’t an option for her, because speaking about it somehow condoned and encouraged a flurry of inappropriate behavior—invited her daughter to be difficult.

Let’s just say difficult wasn’t an option for my mom.

Of course, her no-nonsense parenting style had its plusses: I stayed out of trouble and it kept me focused. But her be-quiet-and-do-only-as-I-say approach gave me a wicked case of low self-esteem—made me uncomfortable with my body, with the opposite sex, with the accolades that came with my successes.

Coping with these things is still a struggle, but I promised that it would be much less so for my girls. From the moment I found out Mari is a girl, I made the conscious decision to help her square her shoulders, walk with her chin held high, be comfortable in her skin, and appreciate who she is, no matter what.

And I work hard at this every… single… day.

For instance, every morning, I lean in and kiss my girls—Mari, 11, and Lila, 8—and triple dog dare them to be brilliant. “Who are you not to be?” I ask. They are, after all, smart girls. And their dad and I invest a massive amount of time and cash on art and music classes, academic enrichment programs, science camps, even Mandarin lessons, to show our girls that our world is huge, and that they don’t have to be average when culture, class, and yes, brilliance can take them places their parents and grands have never gone.

It is these constant reminders—those high expectations—that not only keep the A’s coming, but make my girls proud of their smarts. They are trying to please their parents, sure. But they’re also impressing themselves—planning to be great. Something I was too afraid to do when I was their age.

I was also profoundly uncomfortable with my looks; my kinky hair and my dark skin and my curvaceous body seemed always to be a study in what was wrong with, rather than what was beautiful about, me. And so, ashamed and terribly shy, I hid—always tucked myself into the shadows of my prettier friends, avoided talking to boys at all costs.

I don’t want this for my girls, so I tell them they’re beautiful—every inch of them—everyday. I also make it clear that there is true beauty in being different—kinky hair and plump physiques are just as amazing as any other characteristic pop culture serves up as an ideal. Knowing this not only makes my girls comfortable with their loveliness, but encourages them to forgo judging others because they don’t fit whatever “ideal” others serve up. Do I run the risk of creating conceited monsters? Maybe. But there is honor in loving oneself—in appreciating you, even others don’t.

The most important thing I teach my girls every day, though, is...

To find out  the most important lesson I give my girls, CLICK HERE to see in its entirety this post, written exclusively for Unilever's Don't Fret the Sweat campaign. For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing "moments," check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com.

I Ain't Raising No Punks

By DENENE MILLNER

It’s not that my daughter, Mari, is shy; she hasn’t had any problems making friends. She’s just super quiet, really big on staying out of the spotlight, and focused on keeping things in order.  And she won’t befriend you unless you earn her friendship.

These are some of the things I admire about my 10-year-old. I like to think it makes her wise beyond her years and maybe, too, that these characteristics will help her steer clear of peer pressure when she’s a teenager.  Still, there are times when her cautious demeanor makes it a bit of a struggle to fit in.

This was certainly the case a few summers ago when I enrolled her and her little sister in an art camp not too far from our home. The brochure promised a top-notch art experience, but what Mari got on that first day was a roomful of loud, trash-talking campers who picked fights, tossed chairs and ignored the teachers, who spent more time yelling at the kids and trying to get them in line than they did actually teaching art.

Needless to say, this didn’t go over well with Mari.

Visibly shaken, she announced that she wasn’t going back—like, ever. Which, of course, wasn’t an option because A) I paid a lot of money for that camp and I wasn’t about to let it go to waste, and B) I’m not raising punks.

Now, please understand that I’m not saying money is more important than my child’s safety and comfort, or that I prefer Mari to fight rather than flee. But her father and I discussed the incident and thought it was more important for our daughter to learn a few lessons.

To read the rest of this post, written exclusively for Unilever's Don't Fret the Sweat campaign, CLICK HERE. For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com

Love In the Time Of Play Dates

I promise you, I didn’t see it coming—the explosion of hormones, giggling fits and blushed cheeks that would come when I innocently invited a few of my daughter, Mari’s (female) classmates to play with her and her (male) cousins. Up until that very day, the girls and the boys were equal-opportunity masters of fun; toss a couple of soccer balls, some sidewalk chalk, hula hoops, walkie-talkies and scooters into the mix, and nothing could get in the way of a good time—not even the “ew” factor of playing with the opposite gender.

But on this particular day, things were, well, different. A classmate who’d never before been over, bounced into our house, got a gander of Mari’s super-cute cousin (my nephew), Miles, and, within minutes, changed the whole tenor of the play date. If she wasn’t in his face asking him all kinds of questions—“How old are you?” “When did you get braces?” “Do you have an e-mail account?”—she was off in a corner somewhere, whispering and conspiring about her next move.

And, get this: my daughter was goading her on, acting as a broker between her cousin and her new friend. “Well if you want to talk to him, then talk to him—what’s the big deal?” she said. “I’ll go get him if you want.”

Um, yeah. They’re 10.

The next 15 minutes were a blur; I remember lots of hushed talks with Mari about “inappropriate” conversations and “acceptable dating ages.” I also remember my daughter calmly telling her friend it was time to go home, escorting her to the door and returning to help me finish dinner in the kitchen. She was extremely apologetic about the turn of events, yet surprisingly unruffled. Girls, she explained, like boys and boys like girls and some even call each other girlfriend and boyfriend, though it’s just a name, not a call to action. “I find a few boys attractive,” she added. “But I’m not really interested in any of them.”

“That’s interesting,” I mustered as Mari’s cool-as-you-please attitude extinguished the fire in my gut. “But you’re all 10, and that is much too young for any girl to date a boy. So you know your friend won’t be able to come back anytime soon, right?”

And at that moment, in our silence, both my Mari and I came to an understanding about an impending truth: we are at the beginning stages of that dance—the delicate tug-of-war between age-appropriate attraction to the opposite gender and all-out boy craziness. This is also when it becomes especially crucial for her dad and me to help her pick friends who are dancing to the same tempo—kids who know that 10-year-olds have many more years ahead of them before the boy-crazies set in.

And while I am happy to help, the beauty of Mari is that she already seems to have a sense of this and has confidence in herself and her decisions. In fact, she’d already decided that her classmate probably wouldn’t make the best friend. After all, some of Mari’s favorite people are boys—her big brother, her big brother’s friends, her daddy and especially Miles, her best friend from birth – but this classmate didn’t have the confidence to muster enough words to have a full conversation with one. To Mari, boys are just people—people who can be every bit as fun and interesting as girl friends, so why would she want to be friends with someone who didn’t understand this?

After Mari’s friends-no-more friend left and she finished helping me in the kitchen, she challenged Miles to a raucous game of Secret Agent Guys. Lots of running, giggling, plotting and more giggling was involved, and the intensity that the friends-no-more friend ushered into the room was instantly, miraculously lifted. Mari’s world where boys-are-just-boys and girls-are-just-girls and “boys and girls can do innocent kid things without having to worry about all that other complicated boy/girl stuff” returned.

There will, after all, be plenty of time for the more complicated stuff, and when that time comes, I think Mari will handle it with the same grace and confidence she showed this time.

For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com

Talk, Talk, Talk Some More

No matter how much my tween wants to pretend the “Mommy Touch” is for babies, when she’s feeling crappy, all bets are off: the Mommy Touch is her magical elixir, and my armpit is the only place she wants to be.

This was the case one recent Sunday when she took up residence in my bed as I mindlessly flipped through the TV channels and somehow landed on a channel in the middle of a music video marathon featuring videos I would never authorize any child of mine to watch. But rather than turn the channel, I decided to use the videos as a teaching opportunity for my tween.

So, we watched and talked and dissected and watched and talked some more. I asked questions about her thoughts on the relationship between the men and women in the videos and the song lyrics, and she responded with the “appropriate” answers. After hours of watching and suffering from bloodshot eyes, queasy stomachs and pulsing brains, we finally turned away from the train wreck and settled on more kid-appropriate fare, satisfied that lessons were learned.

Now, I’m no dummy; kids do have a certain knack for saying what they think their parents want to hear—you know, for our protection and their self-preservation. All-too-often, though, there is no correlation between what kids say and believe and what they actually do once they’re out from under you. We all know our tweens are just one unrestricted play date away from becoming frenetic, lighter-waving followers of The Inappropriate Ones.

To combat this possibility, let’s just say I do a lot of talking. I cover my girls, ages 7 and 10, in a shroud of age-appropriate teachable moments that I can only hope build their self confidence and will help them face the myriad of tricky, peer-pressure-filled choices they’ll have to make outside of my watchful eyes.

There are no guarantees.

I know this.

But, thankfully, there are the signs. A few weeks ago, my Mari had to pen an essay about her favorite role model as part of a writing assignment in her 5th grade class. For days, she pondered whom she’d write about—a famous civil rights leader, maybe? Or perhaps the star of her favorite TV show? She just couldn’t decide.

However, the night before her essay was due, instead showing me a paper about the latest teen superstar, she shoved four loose-leaf pages full of handwritten praises for her aunt, an environmental lawyer who founded a non-profit “go green” foundation for kids. See, aside from being brilliant and beautiful, her auntie inspires Mari.

More than any salacious music video.

More than any teen sensation du jour.

More than any fast-talking, way-too-grown-up-for-her-age tween friend.

For sure, Mari is paying attention—I can see it. I feel it. The fact that she’s talking about how cool it would be to have a job taking care of the environment is inspiration enough for me. So, I’ll keep feeding her those teachable moments with the hope that they continue to stick and help build her self confidence.

For her sake and for mine.

For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com

The Subtle Art of Disciplining

Be clear: back in my day, mumbling under one’s breath and slamming doors and talking back to the ‘rents was an indictable offense punishable by lots of shrill screaming and an extended stay in your bedroom sans TV, radio or any form of human contact.

Let’s just say that when it came to kids disrespecting authority, my mom, Bettye, didn’t play. She and my dad raised my brother and me without the benefit of parent coaches, without a parade of childrearing segments on morning news shows and without a subscription to best-selling parenting magazines. What she knew and what she practiced and what worked for her was one simple philosophy: children were to be seen, not heard, and their opinions on most subjects—no matter how much they made sense—definitely weren’t welcome. Keeping my mouth shut and doing as I was told was the only option. For me, it was about self-preservation—survival.

But I promised myself that when I had children of my own, I would use different tactics to get them to obey me—tactics that didn’t involve verbal or mental intimidation. My goal: to have my children respect rather than fear me. Rather than holler and scream like a banshee when they did something wrong, I would praise them when they did something right. “You’re the adult and therefore, smarter than them,” I’d tell myself. “Use your Mighty Isis smart powers to get them to bend to your will.”

At least that’s what all the parenting books said I should do.

None of them warned, though, of the visceral reaction I’d have when my 10-year-old, refused to yield to my pressure to show her little sister some mercy and muttered under her breath or when my 7-year-old, ticked that she didn’t get her way (again), stomped off, leaving slammed doors in her wake.



This! This is what throws me off. Because, though I’m no punk when it comes to disciplining my kids, I feel like the discipline techniques I use should earn me a little respect, right? That my kids should appreciate my new-school parenting techniques which demand good behavior, all the while instilling confidence. I mean, if one of my girls is, say, running through the living room when I’ve just told her not to, I’m not yelling and sending her to her room; I’m using my grown-up logic to help her understand the consequences of running through a room full of glass, breakables and sharp objects and imploring her to learn the value of self-control—a teachable moment that ultimately makes her feel good about herself when she makes a better choice all on her own later on down the line.

The saving grace is that, though my tweens have plenty of their “can’t get right” moments behind our closed doors, they do show deference and respect to their elders outside of our home. In fact, my girls give family elders, teachers, coaches, even teenage babysitters (if you remove their 17-year-old brother out of that group!) all the respect any one child can muster. I can’t help but to think that it’s because we’ve taught them not only to think logically about the consequences they’d face if they refused to follow the rules of the grown-ups in charge—loss of recess if they act up in class, less play time on the soccer field if they don’t listen to their coach—but we have also made it clear that getting into trouble over such things is not an option. After all, Mommy would be sorely disappointed with reports of bad behavior. And the mere idea of making their mother disappointed affects my girls more than any tirade ever could.

I try my best to remind myself of such things when the muttering and the door slamming and the “that’s not fair” outbursts invade our otherwise peaceful house. My girls are, ultimately, good girls. At least this is what their teachers and their coaches and their babysitters and other adults charged with their care outside of my presence tell me.

For this, at least, I’m grateful.

For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com

My Baby Is Getting Grown

I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even wiped the sonogram goop off my belly before I rushed out to my favorite children’s boutiques to pick out fancy dresses, hot pink baby booties and a tin-full of barrettes for my unborn first child, who’d just revealed herself as a girl. I mean, I’d plotted a lifetime for this: I was going to have babies and those babies would be girls and those girls would sit quietly while I weaved their hair into fantastic monuments to the cornrow and curly afro gods, and then, with nary a hair out of place, they’d happily climb into their adorable skirts and matching jackets and patent leather mary janes and skip to school, where they’d be the envy of grade schoolers everywhere.

Yeah—right.

These days, my 10-year-old doesn’t care about dresses and shiny shoes—she’s all about the funky, bedazzled hoodies, comfortable jeans and ankle boots. And though she was raised on a steady diet of R&B legends, she really likes to shake it to the not-so-classic stylings of the latest pop music stars on the radio. Her favorite childhood cartoon characters are getting kicked to the curb for teen goofballs and razor-tongued tweens. Oh, and the twists she’s been wearing in her hair since she was three? The ones I said were the centerpiece of her signature style? Yeah, let’s just say she’s over them.

My Mari’s got her own ideas about how she wants to dress, and what she wants to listen to and watch, and how she looks—a phenomenon that’s kinda taken me aback. I mean, I’m just getting used to the idea of my daughter being willing—and able—to fend for herself in some small measure, and even that took me by surprise in the beginning; I babied her for a long time, simply because I didn’t really know just how much her independence was growing until I’d literally stumble on it—like, oh, wait, you can cut your own meat? And get your homework done without me standing over you? And dial your papa’s phone number by heart?



Still, it’s one thing to embrace her independence—another thing entirely to loosen the grip and let my baby find her way toward her own self-expression. Of course, I still parent her—if a skirt is too short or a show or song is inappropriate or a celebrity she likes does something dumb, she knows I’m not co-signing the style, culture or behavior. But as she grows, so does her taste, and I acknowledge she has the right to like what she likes (within reason) and that those likes may not necessarily jive with mine.

Now, emotionally, allowing this feels like she’s taken one of my lungs. She’s learning to live. I can barely breathe.

But the thing that gets me through is knowing that my husband and I have done our best to steer our daughter down the right path—our family path. We constantly remind her that the world is bigger than a TV show or a bedazzled shirt or a hairstyle or even our little corner of Georgia. We’ve enrolled her in art classes, so she can learn about the great artists of our time—the Picassos and the Beardens. We let her take Mandarin lessons, because we want her to learn the beauty of a language and a culture with which we have little contact. We let her eat foods like sushi and curry goat and Ghanaian peanut soup to not only stretch her palate but to help our Mari identify on the most basic, human level with people from other cultures.

And we talk to her—constantly talk to her.

About the things that matter to us.

Like working hard. And being humble. Appreciating people for their brains, not just their beauty. The importance of honesty. And staying true to what you love and appreciate, no matter what others have to say about it.

These are the things that stretch far beyond what’s the latest hot sneaker or popular TV show or song to bounce to.

These are things I think matter to my Mari, too—no matter how many bedazzled shirts she has stashed in her closet.

For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com

Check Out My Sah-Weet (!) New Blog on Unilever's Don'tFretTheSweat.com

By Denene Millner

I’m in the thick of it — that long, slow, delicate march my daughters are taking toward their teens. I see the changes — I’m not blind. There’s hair peaking from those now-stinky underarms, and their curves are pushing against the flowered pockets of their cute little girl pants. My days of shopping in the kids’ section are numbered. Baths full of bubbles, soapy doll babies and that grungy school of rubber fish have been replaced by hot showers with fancy, perfumed liquid soaps.

Bubble baths, you see, are for babies.

And Mari, 10, and Lila, 7, are not babies — they’re quick to let anyone within the sound of their voices know it, too.

I remember that feeling — that deep wanting for my mom to see I wasn’t a little girl anymore. She worked so hard, my mother, and a large part of her not noticing the changes had to do with her not having the time to notice, really. She’d rise up and head down the road to her factory job before sun-up, and get back home sometime after it was so dark I couldn’t see, and then she’d fix dinner and clean her kitchen and say her prayers and head on to bed so that she could do it all over again. Head down, nose to the grind. Respond when there’s a problem.

Thing is, I never felt comfortable going to her with my problems. Like, seriously, who wants to tell their uber busy, exhausted mom that all the girls in gym class have smooth, hairless legs except you? Or that nobody in the entire 5th grade wears pigtails and ribbons? Or that when the cute boy in class looks in your direction, you get so sweaty and sticky you literally go for hours without raising your hand — no matter that you know every answer — out of fear that said cute boy will think you’re some sweaty, sticky, stinky freak?

No, in my tween world, such things were meant to be pondered alone, in the recesses of my too pink, too fluffy, too little girly room. At least that’s what I told myself every time I stared an awkward tween moment in the face.




I don’t want this for my girls, though. Growing up in a society that puts great stock in unrealistic beauty standards and pushing kids to be grown way before their time is tough, but it gets easier if someone is there to grab your hand and say, “come on, baby — I’ll show you the best I know how.”

This is why I’m excited to partner with Unilever, the makers of Degree® Men, Degree® Girl, Dove® and Suave® Deodorant. They’ve asked me to start a dialogue and share my personal experiences with raising tweens on their mom-focused site, Don’tFrettheSweat.com. The hope is that my mom-to-mom blogs, tweets, and other social media connections will help mothers like me extend that hand to their own kids — to show their children how to make it through the tough, sticky, sweat-inducing situations they’ll face as they take their own slow, delicate march toward their teens.


I’m not perfect, and I know I’ll make missteps along the way. That’s a part of mothering — a part of being human. But I’m up to the challenge. And so when my Mari asks that her hair be styled a little differently from the twists she’s been wearing since she was two, or Lila asks for a new pair of earrings and stresses they not be “baby” hoops, or the two of them alternately press into my hand a crumpled piece of paper with a classmate’s number and the words “Playdate please?” scribbled across it, I try my best to receive the requests for what they are: My daughters’ bold, brave step toward teendom — a land where looking like a baby is forbidden, independence is plentiful, and there’s a lot of room for exploration, embarrassment, growth and especially mistakes.

I’ll watch in wonder.

And offer my hand.

Because they are my babies.

Always will be.

Even if I’m not allowed to say it out loud.

For tips, confidence-building tools and stories about how moms are helping their tweens navigate those sweat-inducing “moments,” check out www.DontFrettheSweat.com