How To Prevent Children From Biting Their Nails?
“How to prevent children from biting their nails?” You’ve certainly asked yourself this a million times. Well then, onychophagia (better known as the act of biting your nails) during childhood is something quite common.
Parents often think that their children do this to get attention, but actually that’s not quite the case. Most of the time, children bite their nails unconsciously. Therefore, it is no use reprimanding them and even punishing them if they continue to do this.
Next, we’ll show you a number of ideas for preventing children from biting their nails.
How to prevent children from biting their nails
use the dialog
The first way to prevent children from biting their nails is to talk to them. As we said before, when you see your child doing this, scolding him defensively, rudely, or threateningly won’t do you any good.
This way, the child will be even more nervous, since we must be aware that, in most cases, biting the nails is synonymous with stress or nervousness for some reason related to the child’s environment or personality.
Therefore, in a calm, calm and quiet way, you should ask her what she is thinking about at that moment or how her day was, in order to know if there is something causing her concern or discomfort. Nail biting usually happens due to three main causes.
Anxiety
If the child bites their nails for this reason, dialogue with them is essential. You should find out what your concern is and try to solve the problem the child has.
Association
Nail biting is often associated with a specific activity that the child does, usually out of distraction. Watching television is one of the most common. In this case, we must control the times when the child bites his nails and explain the reasons why this action is bad.
Imitation
We all know that, during childhood, children imitate everything they see around them. Next, we’ll explain how to prevent children from biting their nails if they’re doing it by imitation.
How to prevent children from biting their nails if they are doing it by imitation
The mirror in which they see themselves
While nail biting is more common in children than in adults, there is a high percentage of people who continue to do so into adulthood.
If you are included in this group, you should be aware of two things. First, in childhood, children copy everything they see around them, even more so their parents. That way, if the child sees you biting your nails, they can do that too, so the first step you should take is to avoid biting your nails in front of them.
Second, in order for the child to quit this behavior, you must also stop doing this. To do so, propose a game in which each time one of the two sees the other doing this, there will be an accomplice gesture to prevent this from happening when there are other people present.
use other activities
We spend a lot of our time watching what children are doing. That’s why you can prevent them from biting their nails before this action starts to become a habit.
To do this, when you see that the child has their hands in their mouths, you can propose an activity in which they need to hold something with their hands. Painting or drawing, making a puzzle or holding a doll are some of the options. Use whatever you have around to do this as quickly as possible.
show your nails
If you don’t bite your nails, explain and show your child your hands. In this way, she will know the advantages of having beautiful and well-groomed nails. Generally, in the case of girls, they love to paint their nails, so you can play with this alternative too.
