Commonly known as nail biting. Does your children have this compulsive habit? Is this a force of habit or is it related to stress, boredom? My daughter is 11 and cannot seem to kick the bad habit. Albeit she tried but it never lasted for more than a month. Unfortunately, nagging and threatening do not help! Recently, I have started to use a bitter nail polish on her nails to deter her from biting. Does anyone know if the solution post any side effects or danger if accidentally consumed?
I used to be a dreadful nail biter when I was younger. I tried that bitter tasting coating but used go and wash my hands to get rid of it so that I could keep on biting!! Now if I break a nail my finger tips get so painful that I can't wait for the nail to grow again.
This sounds terriable,,,but! When my son was little he used to bite his nails until they bled. I tried that nail polish with the bitter taste on it but he learned to like it,,lol. by accident, i caught my son sneaking some jalapeno from a jar not for eating but for an experiment. (he now loves them) but what happened as a child he didn't like them at all, and after he put his hands in the jar his fingers felt like they were on fire. (all the boo-boos from biting) He couldn't bite his nails for about a week and believe it or not that broke his habit. I don't think i would suggest anything like that on purpose, but dang it worked!! So maybe look into something a little less painful, and see what happens,,
I used to bite my nails as a child and the bitter nail polish worked for me. My children bite their nails too, but it hasn't worked for them. My teenage daughter really tries to grow her nails but they are so brittle that if one breaks, she chews the rest off! I'd like to find something to help them stop as they chew them right to the skin and that looks AWFUL!
My brother is a life long nail biter. When he was young, Mom tried the hot sauce on his fingers, he washed it off outside in rain puddles or turned the outdoor faucet on until he was big enough to reach the bathroom faucet by himself. She gave up. He turned 60 back in Feb and still bites his nails.
Oh no ... I am hyperventilating! I can only hope she will stop sooner. It has been 3 days since she started on the awfully bitter nail polish. So far so good. I guess it also helps if someone tells her that her nails are ugly. She admitted to me today that she thinks twice now before attacking her fingers. I hope no one tells her that she could jolly well wash them off first before chewing them! Perhaps it's hereditary? Her father bit his nails for the last 40 yrs but eventually quit biting successfully about a year ago. Oh, that was due to vanity!
I am a lifelong nail-biter. My mother and one of my aunts tried so many times to get me to quit. They tried bitter nail polish, bribery, vanity, you name it. I'd quit for long enough to get the reward and start right back up again. So here I am now, 42 years old and a mother to almost 4 children. I still bite my nails to the quick. I came to terms with it quite a few years back. I've never been handicapped in either my social life or career because of it. It's just a part of who I am. None of my children seem to have inherited this lousy habit, which surprises me because my mother and my grandmother both were nail-biters too. My mother finally quit when she was in her 60's. I'm not sure why. Now if anyone can come up with a cure for nose-picking, I'd be interested in that one. LOL. My oldest son (5 1/2) seems to be making a career out of it.
Seems that age bracket (9-14 ish) is a big nail bitting time, I know that's when it was the worst for me. I think I just grew out of it when I started to worry how my nail and fingers looked. Perhaps you can show her a close up of all the microscopic yuckys that live under our nails and on our fingertips. Stuff like that always gets to me.
