My son will be 3 in July and for the past 3 or 4 weeks he has been biting his fingernails. I can't figure out why or how to get him to stop this horrible habbit. I'm very good about keeping finger and toe nails trimmed so it's not from snags or something that might annoy him. I've always thought nail biting was something people used to cope...but he's not old enough to have had trauma to cope from. I'm a SAHM so I know his every move...he hasn't been traumatized. :) Most of the time when I ask him to stop biting them he will take his fingers out of his mouth until he forgets and does it again, but there are a few times that he gets mad at me for asking him to take his fingers out of his mouth.
I mostly want to know if this is a common problem with Toddlers? Anyone out there experience this? Is it just a phase or should I work on a real solution to get him to stop, and if so...suggestions would be lovely! :)
Thanks Moms,
K~
We had the same problem. Some kids are just very oral and need something there. I stopped it by giving him back the binky. He did chew up qiute few binkies. Later was easier to take the binki away. Good luck!
At this age, the habit of biting the nails or cuticles can become just that, a habit. It doesn't have to signal anything. My daughter tried it, very briefly, because she had seen someone else doing it. If your son wants to gnaw on something, give him a carrot stick or a pickle. It's fun to realize that if you chew the outside off the carrot, you are left with a very sweet core. And you can nibble the tender seeds out of the inside of a pickle or cucumber.
Just remind him to keep his fingers out of his mouth and give him something else to chomp on.
Best wishes!
Even 3 year olds can get stressed out. It doesn't mean he's traumatized, but that something is stressing him out or maybe he's just teething with this molars coming in & his mouth hurts. But I would just let him do it, it's his coping mechanism. If you really want him to stop, I guess you have to figure out what's stressing him out. Sorry, no other good solutions...maybe distraction of some kind, find something else for him to put in his mouth. good luck!
My daughter was a serious nail biter, and I started out nagging her a lot. I switched to telling her that it was a bad idea and letting her know that she could decide to stop biting if she wanted to. She wanted to paint her nails (age 4), but I wasn't going to give her nail polish if she was just going to eat it. So, we used that as incentive.
Perhaps you can find something that your son can work toward. A new toy or game? And then when he bites his nails, you can take it away.
When my daughter would bite (or scrape the nail polish with her teeth), then I would take it all off.
Having *her* break the habit has really paid off because it's something that I can point to as *her* decision to change/accomplish. When something else difficult for her comes up (she's 5.5 now), then I can point to the no-biting as her having done hard things and accomplishing goals.
Good luck!
I don't have any advice other than to make sure you get him to stop. I'm now 24 and still a nail biter. It's a horrible habit, but it is not necessarily a coping mechanism. It can also be a nervous habit...some people twitch, others use what would normally be a coping mechanism. Is there something big coming up in his life like maybe starting preschool? Or did his pacifier/other security habit get taken away recently?
If it is a coping mechanism it doesn't have to result from "trauma." I once had a therapist tell me that because my mom and I always fought, I started nail biting because I couldn't always stand up for myself and fight back...hence a physical action preventing me from speaking.
Good luck!
My Daughter started biting her nails at age 2 and it is considered a "self-soothing" behavior, like using a pacifier or sucking a thumb. I could never get her to stop. When she got braces it made it harder to bite her nails and she stopped biting her nails.
My 2 year old son bites his nails as well. He seems so good at it anymore that I never seem to have to trim his nails! I really don't think it has anything to do with coping from trauma. My son's only trauma is having a 3 year old sister. I just think it is a bad habit he seemed to have gleamed onto. I am not sure how he got it cause we aren't a nail biting family. Maybe just a sharp edge one time and he realized he could fix on his own?
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I don't care for the habit myself and the germs it includes. I figure I will give it some time before I start to worry and try new ways to stop it. On the upside, it seems better than nose picking :)
hi K~
my son started this at about 4... turns out he was coping his 'best' friend from preschool. for her it was the oral thing/anxious.. but they were best friends and she did it..
It was annoying to me and I always asked him to stop when I saw it. I would give him plastic straws or lollipop sticks (without the candy) to get his mind off it on bad days.. it worked.
he is now two yrs later just picked it up again.. recently.. from the same gal who is also in his K class... But more likely I can see he has some hangnails. this time I'm using the route of .. 'dude' do you know where your just had your hands. (out in the dirt pile,. in the sand at the beach).. eew. all those germs under your fingernails need to be removed and it's not a good idea to chew on your nails..
good luck.. thanks for the question it helped me too!
regards
-MK.
what got me to quit biting my nails was to get pretty manicures that I wouldnt want to mess up...obviously this wouldnt help in your son's case, but it can become a habit that is extremely hard to break, it took me until I was about 25, and sometimes I still find myself chewing on my cuticles.
my kids are nail biters. the only thing that has helped us was sugar free gum. I didn't have to nag and nag and they got out their chewing for a little while. I know you son is young, my kids are a little older but I think we started gum at around 3 with supervision.
I agree with trying to get him to stop now. It is such a hard habbit to break later. I have no idea when I started biting my nails but I was very embarrassed by it in middle and high school. The polishes didn't work for me---I would endure the horrible taste just to bite my nails. I started getting my nails done and occasionally when I took the nails off, I would go back to biting them. Finally (at age 31) I stopped getting them done since we could no longer afford it. (So I had been getting them done since I was 13). It was still very hard for me to not bite them but I finally have nails! I would have thought that be getting my nails done for so long my brain would have trained it's self to not bite them but that wasn't the case at all.
My 13yr dd has done it for a long time, and one day she came to me and said there is a nail polish that I want. She looked it up online and found the one she thought was the best so we went to the store got it and she stopped. She said it puts a really bad taste in your mouth. She used it for about two weeks and did not need it any more. When she starts to do it again she will put the polish back on. I don't know if this would work for your son but just wanted to let you know.
