Advice on Stopping Cuticle and Nail Biting

There are over the counter products that will make the nails taste badly which may help your son. This is a very difficult habit to break. One technique that I am aware of is for him to wear a rubberband on his wrist and snap it whenever he feels like biting his nails.
If another family member has this problem, a competition to stop the biting, between the two of them may also work.

It's called Thumb It can be purchased at any pharmcy over the counter like Rite Aid I think Shop Rite sells it too. It's like nail polish that tastes really bad. Good Luck!

Please listen to me, I speak with experience. I'm 39 and have never had nails in my life. All those brush on nasty tasting things meant to deter are useless, if your child's already into this as a habit. It can easily be washed off, and you can even get used to the awful taste, I kid you not. It is a stress-related 'habit' and your child needs to see a therapist, seriously, who will get to the root of it with behavior modification therapy (you can quote me). If not, I promise you will one day most likely have a 39 year old adult child still biting his nails. Nothing my mother ever did worked, and the few therapists I've seen in my life for OTHER reasons have told me that if I wanted they were sure they could help me stop biting my nails. Nothing else works. I never bothered to try the therapy. I also learned this when in psych. classes in college. Behavior modification. A therapist can get your son to stop, for sure. Do you have a counselor you can talk to about it, who could reccomend someone for this?

There's a product called Thumb. You can get it at most drug stores. Or ask your pharmacist to order it for you. It's a clear nail polish. It tastes awful, but won't hurt him. It's made for nail biting, thumb sucking, etc. Only problem is that if he eats something greasy with his fingers, say like fried chicken, it will get the taste on the food and it doesn't taste good. Good luck.

get the boy those soft white cotton gloves they use for skin care for hands. Explain to the boy he must where them until he learns to stop biting on his fingers. Tell him if he doesn't wear them and continues biting he will get an infection and that would hurt him alot and keep him from being able to use his hands....like he wont be able to play with his toys or friends because his hands will hurt. Start him off slowly so he can see he can still play with his toys while wearing them...then add more time to him wearing them.... To help him along with this, get the same gloves for yourself and wear them for the time he's wearing them....The last thing you want to do is make it seem as if it's a punishment.

They sell non toxic clear nail polish(it wont make his nails look like there is polish on them, it's not shiny) that tastes horrible. My friend actually just got done using it for his son, if you can't find it message me and I will get the name/where it is sold for you.

My daughter did the same thing.
It took me taking her through some mature education...OK, and bribing her with nail polish, but the education carried more weight.

I started with a little education about colds and flus, and the importance of handwashing in prevention. Then I taught her a bit about the skin layers....how your body is water proof, and it protects you from so much..especially germs. But when you put your hands near your eyes nose and mouth, you can catch germs. I made sure to stress that when you don't wash your hands, germs enter the body when your hands get close to your eyes, nose and mouth...those are openings. Especially washing hands before you eat prevents you from bringing the germs from your hands into your body on your food. I even went as far as explaining that sometimes picking your nose is giving you more germs than your "picking out". I also told her about forensics (I worked in medicine) and how cultures under the nails are germ colonies. Not only germs you pick up from touching door knobs, but the germs under the nails don't 100% wash away when you wash your hands.....so they have time to grow, colonize. When I scrubbed at work, we had to use nail picks and scrub under hte nails..Its a whole village of germs under there and she was putting it in her mouth when she was biting the nails. Finger nails have no business in her mouth. NOw to add insult to injury...she is biting the cuticle...leaving openings in the skin right on the hands....Hand washing is not enough, she has to keep them covered since she broke the skin. Everytime she whined about having a cold, sniffles or a cough....I'd ask to see her fingers. I'd blame her hand washing/hygeine or nail biting. Infection is not just green gooey stuff in the cut...it is germs, colds, flus and deadly diseases too.

Ok, then we saw a great show on I think The Discovery Health Channel (my daughter loves the gross medical shows)...it was about a woman who caught a Staph virus when her daughter sneezed on an open wound on her hand. It opened up a whole conversation about the dangers of open wounds in vulnerable areas like the hands. Well...in the TV show, the virus attacked her damaged shoulder tissue, not the local area where she was initially infected. She ended up with a necrotizing infection and lost most of the muscle of her arm...the staph just decayed it. SHe had to have multiple surgeries to remove the dead infected muscle tissue. The germs picked out the weakest tissue in the body and she had a recent shoulder injury that was healing. It was an eye opener for her to see a nasty internal infection being traced to a break in the skin from a hang nail.

Now, working in medicine, I admit that I do get a bit germaphobic. I see people with hepatitis and HIV walking around like everyone else. I saw someone with HIV AND Hep B walking around with a burn on his hand, and it wasn't covered. Maybe it wasn't intentional, maybe he just had no clue he is spreading his disease to the public. Maybe he was not mentally capable of understanding his illness...but he was in fact touching everything putting everyone else at risk. It made me cringe thinking about every hand rail, door handle he has infected in the public. OK, HIV dies once its dry....but Hepatitis lives in a drop of blood for days. Touching things with open wounds is like licking a public toilet seat. So I am very obsessive about hand washing in public and protecting openings in the skin from infection.

I tell her often how inappropriate it is to have open wounds on the hands. People will think she is spreading germs too....and worse, she is exposing herself. In some countries, you do not go in public with a cold unless you wear a mask. You don't lick public doorknobs...its gross....you don't touch things with open wounds....
SO if she bites her cuticles to a point of open wounds, she has to cover the wounds. Hands are too public...they touch everything.

Buy a couple boxes of bandaids...use them everytime you see a break in the skin....
Maybe he will catch on how important the skins integrity really is.

Educate him.
It's not just your pet peave, it is important.

when i was a kid, i had the same affliction. there are a few different types of brush on formulas to paint onto the nail like a polish. one tastes awful, another gets hot if you put your fingers in your mouth. none stopped me, but it's worth a shot, maybe....