It is amazing to know that even adults still bite their nails; some say they do when they are deep in thoughts, scared, anxious or even day dreaming. I often hear people ask this question, ‘can an adult learn new tricks at his old age’?. Children grow into adults with habits formed when growing up. So it is only clever to help crop some habits before they are mature.
During childhood, one of the major leisure habits for kids is biting of nails. Often times, as parents you wonder how these kids develop such a habit at a tender age. Imitation is not the only reason why kids bite their nails; it could be as a result of boredom, nervousness, curiosity, unconscious effort and many more. For some kids, they can outgrow it while for some if the habit isn’t curbed at the early stage, it becomes harder later and you find such kids grow into adulthood with such habit. Hence the following tips:
Yelling and spanking is not the solution, what it does to kids is to make them conscious of not biting their nails when parents are around them but they keep up with the habit in your absence. The goal of parents is to ensure that their kids permanently break out from such habit. Instead, find out the cause of him/her biting their nails and work on it.
Have a subtle discussion with your child on breaking out from such habit. Look for books and kiddies TV programme that discourages biting of the nails. This will make them more conscious to break from the habit more quickly. Thus, kids often learn from what they read and watch.
Always help him /her to break out from the habit by tapping their hand each time they start biting their nails or better still if you are afar call their name to get them conscious to stop the habit.
Ensure that their nails are well cut and trimmed to the lowest minimum. This will help a lot because once they try to bite; there is no adequate nail to bite with their teeth.
Once you observe that your child doesn’t bite his/her nails for a day, reward them. It makes them excited and they will want to strive hard to drop the habit permanently.