Best Way to Help Your Children Stop Nail Biting

Many children develop behavioral habits dur­ing the preschool years, and nail-biting is one of the most com­mon. While this particular habit can be a sign of anxiety and nervousness in an older child, teenager, or adult, it doesn’t have the same psychological significance in a child aged six years and under—a young child usually bites her nails just because she enjoys the nibbling sensation, likes having a finger in his mouth, and derives a sense of achievement from shaping her nails.

Even though nail-biting is a comfort habit, you may want to discourage your child from doing so for a number of reasons:

• The danger of infection. Your child may bite her nail so hard that the skin surrounding the nail becomes broken, which allows infection to set in easily.
• The fingers look unsightly. A well-chewed fingernail, sur­rounded by inflamed skin, looks awful—it’s even worse if every finger has this appearance.
• The child looks immature. Fingers in the mouth is something associated with a younger child, and a four-year-old child may look babyish and immature.

A positive approach—in which you reinforce the times when your child doesn’t bite her nails—will be more effective Than a negative approach that involves punishment or disap­proval when the child does bite them. Strategies such as paint­ing your child’s nails with a bitter-tasting fluid, wrapping tape around her fingers so that she can’t access her nails, or even making fun of her, won’t help. If anything, these strategies are more likely to strengthen your child’s determination to contin­ue the nail-biting habit.

Explain to your child what you intend to do (help her stop biting her nails), why you want to do this (for example, because other children won’t want to play with her), and how you intend to help her (for example, by showing how pleased you are with her when she doesn’t bite her nails). Then gradually do exactly all of these things. When your child does cope with an activity without biting her nails, make a fuss over her, so that your approval is obvious.