As my oldest gets older, closer to that lovely age of puberty, I have to start thinking about things like hygiene and special talks. Yikes! We want them to stay toddlers forever, but one day, the Tide commercial will become a reality. They will walk pass or throw a shirt in the laundry that will have your eyebrows falling off. You’ll stop to smell your own armpits like “is that me? Did I put some on today?” and soon realize it’s your little person who was hard at play. So the big question comes up: what kind of deodorant do I buy? You hear of the horror stories of anti-perspirants and deodorants that contain certain ingredients like Aluminum Zirconium and warnings to stay away as it may be harmful, but that also limits your selection. It’s a challenge to find a deodorant that you can trust too. How many of us have tried out a deodorant that smelled good on the bar or roll but after applying it, you might as well have used elephant sweat lol.
I have to share a bad experience I had with deodorant but you have to promise not to tell anyone. Like to hear it, here it goes. In 5th grade, our teachers were putting heavy emphasis on hygiene and calling folks out for coming up to the teacher’s desk smelling musty. So with that, everyone was insecure about smelling “good enough” to avoid embarrassment. One day, our dance teacher received a large shipment of Teen Spirit deodorant samples. We were all like “yes!”. I had never used nor needed deodorant but wanted to try it out. It smelled so good. When my mom saw that I had it, she bought me another kind of deodorant for when the samples would run out. I’m not sure which deodorant caused my symptoms, but shortly after, I experienced severe irritation under one of my armpits and mild under the other. The armpit with the severe irritation would itch so badly and was so irritated that when I would go to rub or scratch it, my skin would peel off. It got to a point where my armpit was extremely white and I was ashamed to wear tank tops, leotards, or anything that would put my armpits at risk of being seen. Yet any material that touched it would make it worse. It would burn in the shower especially using any type of soaps. The sad part is that the doctor I saw at the clinic had no idea of what to diagnose me with and only gave suggestion on how to treat. Eventually over time, the skin healed and irritation ceased but I was afraid to try out other deodorants for a while.
So as a mom of a future 5th grader (next year), what deodorant brand would you recommend for anyone 14 and under?
~Yo! Mama
