Nail biting habit is not only seen in children, rather adults are also very active in doing it as a habit. There may be number of reasons due to which nail biting activity develops in children but this can leads to serious infection as the dirt and dusts available between the finger and finger nails would get inside the stomach and give rise to many diseases. Maximum children bite their nail due to nervousness or tension. At the same time some kids go ahead with this nail biting habit to resolve their boredom. If you observe carefully, you will never see this habit in a small baby. As your young baby grow up and starts knowing the world, he gets several thoughts in this small brain and starts biting nails due to anxiousness. But, it will be the responsibility of the parents solely restricts the activity. Let us have a look at some of the ways to shop nail biting habit in children.
Ways to stop nail biting habits in children
Identify the underlying cause
It will be actually important to know the reason about your child’s anxiousness. You need to speak to her or him repeatedly to find out what exactly is in their mind. Children would like to share their grief, sorrow or happiness once they are cozy with you. After addressing the main reason, you can make your child understand in such a way that she /he throws away the unhealthy thought. This will ideally help reducing the activity of biting nails.
Give your child some space
Some parents have the habit of restricting everything for their child. They interfere in every step of their child’s activity whether it is necessary or unnecessary. It is the time for you to stop nagging behind your child and give him some free space. Normally children become anxious as their parents interfere too much in their activity which results into biting of nails.
Help your child when she realizes a fault
It is quite common for children to make several mistakes at various stages of their life. The duty of parents is to monitor their fault and make him/her realize the fault through various tricky techniques. As soon as she realizes her fault, give her some scope of rectifying instead of scolding. Children may also develop the habit of biting nails due to guilt feeling. It is the responsibility of every parent to break their guilt feeling by behaving with them as if nothing happened and everything is as normal as before.
Awareness of the habit
For every kid, statements and words about awareness will be really important. Let your child know about what negative affect can take place in her health when she bites her nail. Always remind her not to bite nails as soon as she starts initiating with the same activity. As soon as she forgets, just remind her with the same with eye signal or a code word. Some kids have the spontaneous action of rectifying their fault once anyone points the same.
An alternative to the habit
Just like some adults smokers are provided with alternative to cigarette in order to let them get away from the particular habit, children can also be provided with an alternative to nail biting habit. If they are anxious or tensed ask them to practice the activity like holding your arms tightly instead of biting their nails. You can also ask him or her to close and release their fist several times. This is a wonderful exercise through which your kids can easily release their anxiety.
Early intervention
Biting of finger nails looks very small thing especially when children do. But, this habit can sometime become a great loss. Thus, it is important for the parents to intervene and restrict the habit at an initial go. Start stopping your child from biting nail from the day one so that he will think twice before doing the same thing from the next time. Even let your child realize that it will be a shameful habit to bite nails in front of your friends, relatives and other strangers in the society. You can also use some strategy to restrict him from this particular habit.
Do not force or nag
Children have the tendency of doing something repeatedly which you will ask them to stop. Now, even with the habit of nail biting this will be true. So, the first tip of making your kid stop the habit of biting nails will be not to force them much in this respect. Even do not punish them while they nag for biting nails as this can give rise to their aggressiveness doing the same.
Help your child’s friend in awareness
Instead of making your child aware of this habit, it will be better to help his friend or someone close to him. While the other person becomes aware, the message will pass indirectly to your child. Children have a tendency of listening to the fellow mates rather than listening to parents. Even this fact will be true for your child. Try this strategy with your child and see how well he improves and stay away from nail biting habit.
Engage his hands
The nail biting habit is boost up as your child gets full freedom to use his hands and control it. What if his both the hands get engaged? Have you ever think how it can go when both the hands of your child gets engaged? Yes, you can make your child do something which he likes. For example gift him a toy gun which he can play with the placement of both the hands in the trigger. If you have girl child, give her a doll and all types of fashion wear. Play games with her where she needs to use both her hands to make her doll wear the garment. While doing this, she needs to use her both hands.
Speak about consequences
You must make your child know about why this nail biting habit is not good. Go for the extreme examples where the victim has experienced the terrific time. This will build a terror in your child’s mind and he will actually stay away from the habit of nail biting. Try this as it actually works.
