How to wean your child from the habit of biting his nails.
This will be discussed below.
You should start by looking for the reasons why your child starts biting his nails. There are many of them, but understanding why the habit of biting nails formed can help a child get rid of it in a shorter time and without unnecessary discomfort.
Researchers in child psychology claim that by biting their nails, a child thus gnaws out his shortcomings, problems and mistakes he has made.
| Therefore, one of the main reasons why children, and sometimes schoolchildren, bite their nails is stress, which can be caused by various factors. The main ones are: punishment at school and at home, problems communicating with peers, fear of answering at the board or bad grades. |
Also, the reason for this habit is internal complexes. The child may be dissatisfied with himself due to low self-esteem or feel discomfort due to differences from his peers.
Consequences of a bad habit
If parents notice that a child bites his nails, how to stop him from doing it? This should become the main issue in the further education of the child. This harmful activity has very dangerous consequences. The unkempt appearance of children's hands is just the tip of the iceberg. Pediatricians often note that various infections occur through injuries around the nail. Harmful bacteria that enter the child’s body through a wound provoke the occurrence of a fungal or skin disease. The habit of biting the nail plate can cause disruption of the gastrointestinal tract, because all babies often put dirty fingers in their mouth.
Psychological methods on how to stop a child from biting his nails.
Now we should dwell in more detail on how to ensure that a child stops biting his nails without specific methods, which are called “traditional” and are popular among the people.
Help in combating a habit can be provided both by parents , if such a habit does not carry internal serious problems associated with psychological trauma, and by psychologists and psychotherapists , if we are talking about serious problems, for example, neuroses, as has already been written about higher.
If we are talking about non-advanced forms, then parents should follow several rules that will help the child cope with a bad habit. First of all, it is necessary to make sure that the child is comfortable and clearly knows that his problems can be solved . At the same time, experts recommend resorting to some “psychological tricks.”
The first thing parents need to remember is: you can’t scold a child for bad habits , in particular for biting his nails - at the subconscious level, children do things that they focus their attention on, imposing a ban.
| The first thing parents need to remember is that you cannot scold your child for bad habits, in particular for biting his nails - at the subconscious level, children do things that they focus their attention on, imposing a ban. |
It is also important to teach the child to cope with stress on his own, for example, to be distracted by some picture, start counting to ten, listen to his breathing.
Possible reasons
At an earlier age, parents should provide the baby with a favorable environment, surrounding him with love and care. The child should not see quarrels and fights between his relatives; it is also recommended to protect him from the company of large and noisy companies where adults smoke and drink. Moving can often cause psychological trauma. Harmony in the family is a guarantee of peace of mind for the child.
2. In a child under 3 years old, this habit appears in the process of weaning from the pacifier.
3. Copying adults is an integral part of the development of the personality of every child. It is difficult to explain to children that biting nails is a bad habit if one of the parents is exposed to this harmful activity. A bad example is always contagious. This point is the main reason why a child bites his nails.
Using special nail polishes.
Girls can have a light manicure , showing how beautiful their nails look when they are neatly trimmed and not bitten.
If your child continues to bite his nails, you can purchase special bitter varnishes. There are many varnishes. Most of them are colorless, so even boys can apply them.
During the holidays, when spending time together, make sure that your child does not bite his nails. To do this, it is enough to distract him at the moment when he brings his hands to his mouth . You can distract your child by asking him to do or bring something. The action should not be very long and simple enough so that the child’s hands are busy, but he does not feel dissatisfied with being forced to do something.
And most importantly : parents should not refuse affection from their baby, even if they are very busy or tired.
By following these simple rules, it is easy to stop children from biting their nails if the problem has not reached the scale where the help of a psychologist is required. It should be remembered that a favorable atmosphere in the family ensures that children from such families are rarely susceptible to such bad habits.
Physiological reasons why a child bites his nails:
- Lack of vitamins E, A, magnesium. With a lack of microelements, the child becomes anxious and quickly gets tired. In this way, the child relieves stress and calms down.
- With a disorder of the nervous system, various neuroses, problems of the cardiovascular system, the habit of biting nails becomes a way to calm down.
- When parents do not properly monitor nail hygiene, they do not cut them on time, the child simply bites his nails.
- It is believed that one of the common reasons for biting nails is a lack of silicon in the body. Silicon is an essential element and its absence is expressed by various signs. Internal parasites need large doses of silicon, which they obtain from their host. Nails and hair contain large amounts of silicon. And the waste products of parasites cause nervous disorders. Be sure to check your child for parasites. Moreover, the space under the nails is a breeding ground for infections and germs that the child successfully swallows.
How to wean it off?
What the child is allowed to do once, says Komarovsky, what the parents once did not pay attention to, is done the second time by the child as a completely legal action that was not prohibited. For this reason, it is advisable to correct the child’s actions at the initial stage, before the habit has yet become a reflex.
If nail biting is already a persistent habit, parents need to make a serious pedagogical decision for themselves. If you fight, then always and everywhere, without weekends or holidays. Parents' demands must be clearly motivated. The child must know what exactly he is doing wrong and what the consequences are for him.
At the initial stage, parents need to establish at any cost the true cause of their child’s addiction. If you can’t find it on your own, you can contact your local pediatrician or child psychologist, but not with the question of how to eradicate the habit, but with the question of where the problem “grows legs.”
The worst thing that parents who decide to wean their child from a harmful addiction can come up with is to rudely pull him back and hit him in the arms. This does not solve the problem, and the baby will soon understand that biting his nails in front of his parents is forbidden, but alone, when no one is watching, it is very possible.
There is no miracle cure in the form of a tablet or syrup for this scourge. It is also ineffective to smear your nails with something bitter (mustard, pepper). Even worse is to start intimidating the child and frightening him with all sorts of horrors, because this bad habit may immediately be replaced by another. The child will quickly begin to, for example, bite his lips or spit.
If the reason for nail biting lies in stressful situations or anxiety of the child, you need to teach him to express his emotions in a different way - for example, in words. To do this, there are many psychological techniques based on games that will be interesting for the child to engage in.
You can give your baby soothing herbal tea, do a relaxing massage, be sure to carry out water treatments every day, take more walks in the fresh air and minimize the time the child spends in front of the TV or computer monitor.
In parallel with eliminating psychological discomfort, you need to work on strengthening the nail plates, because a strong and resistant nail is more difficult to chew. To do this, after consulting with a pediatrician, it makes sense to start giving the child calcium supplements in the permitted age-appropriate dosages. For nails, you can make strengthening baths with saline solutions and essential oils (cedar oil is good).
The child should be taught not only to relax, but also to concentrate. If you keep your baby busy with an interesting activity (drawing, mosaics, modeling or something else), he will be less likely to have the desire to put his hands in his mouth. It is desirable that the work be hand-made. Fingers must be involved. If it’s creative activities together with adults, that’s just wonderful.
Traditional methods of combating onychophagia
Folk methods include:
- Formation of the reflex. A loose elastic band and a soft bracelet are put on the baby’s hand. An adult, seeing that the child begins to bite his nail plates, pulls off the elastic band (bracelet) and snaps his hand. The method seems cruel, but it is effective.
- Relieving tension. The child must be taught to alternately clench and unclench his fists. 5 minutes of such gymnastics helps reduce nervousness.
- Nails are wiped with lemon slices and rubbed with garlic cloves.
- Make an infusion of wormwood: pour a dessert spoon of dried raw material with a glass of boiling water. After half an hour, dip your fingers in the infusion for two minutes. You can repeat this several times a day.
Dr. Komarovsky does not approve of the use of hot seasonings (pepper, mustard). He believes that this can cause harm to the mucous membranes of the nose and eyes.
Thus, knowing Dr. Komarovsky’s methods of how to stop a child from biting his nails at 3 years old, you can easily cope with this bad habit.
About a bad habit
Approximately 30% of children regularly bite their fingernails. In adolescence, almost half of boys and girls do this. 25% of them continue the habit into adulthood.
According to Komarovsky, it is formed (like other bad habits) as a frequent and repeated sequence of certain identical actions. Gradually, this action ceases to be controlled by the brain and becomes a reflex. The child does not think at all about whether to start biting his nails or not, he just does it. The habits that are formed in childhood gradually shape a person’s character.
Parents quite often turn to children's doctors with the question of how to explain to their child all the harm of his habit. But this does not solve the problem any faster, since it goes beyond the purely medical and becomes partly pedagogical and partly psychological.
Different countries and social circles have their own ideas about bad habits and the norm. Evgeniy Komarovsky advises that those actions of a child that cause him physical and other harm are considered definitely harmful.
Biting your nails is harmful:
- Regular nibbling of the skin around the nail plate can lead to thinning of the skin, increased sensitivity of the fingertips, and inflammatory processes in the deep layers of the skin. This can change the color and appearance of your nails, make them look unhealthy, and cause them to break.
- Children who frequently bite their nails are at greater risk of getting sick, because microbes that live in the oropharynx can enter the bloodstream through microscopic wounds in the area of the nail plates injured by the teeth and cause quite serious illnesses.
Under the nails there are usually many not very useful microorganisms and parasites, which, when the fingers are in the mouth, easily penetrate into the oral cavity, from where they travel through the body, causing a variety of diseases along the way. Sufficiently hard nail plates can injure tooth enamel when you try to chew them.
Since the habit is considered actually pathological, doctors even came up with a completely medical definition for it, it is called onychophagia. The habit has its own number in the classification of diseases - F98.
How to break a small child's habit
Parents should carefully monitor the appearance of the baby, because it can directly depend on the state of health. If they find that a child (2 years old) is biting his nails, it is necessary to find out the reasons. Some mothers diligently lubricate their hands with mustard, chili or agave juice, but the positive result does not last long. Experts have found that the habit of nail biting is a consequence of a certain situation, so parents should discover the possible cause and sort it out. In other words, you need to find out what contributed to the stress state.
Komarovsky advises paying special attention to the common problem of a child biting his nails. He recommends correcting existing errors in a timely manner. The famous doctor says that one cannot be indifferent to the bad activities of one’s children. According to Komarovsky, children’s habits are formed by adults, who are obliged to influence the development of events in a timely manner and not be a bad example for them.
