Son Is Becoming a Nail Biter :(

A.,

I would recommend talking to the doctor. My son is doing the same thing at 21 months...he hates his nails any longer than necessary and is starting to bite to get rid of them (my husband has a small form of OCD and I think my son is showing some signs...we are speaking with the doctor). He often comes to me and says "Nail". I stop what I am doing to sit and look at his hands and maybe clip one or two if they are ragged or a bit long. This calms him and he is okay for a few days.

Good luck.

T.

do you smoke? i know this sounds funny but my friends and i have a completely UNscientific theory that if children are exposed to smoke they will bite their nails. both my brother and i were nail biters and our parents smoked. both my brother and i don't and none of our kids bite their nails (6 kids between us!) and for my 2 friends who discussed this with me it is the same story. i have asked other people who are nail biters and almost always they had one or both parents who smoked. i know there is no proof to this but it could be something to think about...

From what you say all is normal in the house and things,, well some thing isn't going right,, other wise he wouldn't all of a sudden be biting his nails,, doe he go to play-school,, day care,, gramma's or Aunties? Baby-sitter's,,cousins,, other kids he plays with,, check all peeps that are around him and the things they might have done or watched on tv??? maybe some thing happened there at one of those places,, or maybe he saw some thing on TV?? just ideas;; D.

There is nasty tasting nail polish you can buy for it. My father in law put hot sauce on his youngest daughters nails, had the opposite effect, she now loves hot sauce.

Put some non toxic bitter stuff on his nails so they don't taste good to bite, but doesn't harm him to ingest. They probably make something, check the store.

My son did the same thing at about the same age. I asked him about it one day and then I realized he didn't even realize he was doing it. I just pointed it out to him for a few months and eventually he stopped.

my daugther started biting her nails once i took away her pacifier. unfortunately (at least in my family), the oral fixation seems to be hereditary. my dad bites his nails, i was a big-time thumbsucker, my one daugyhter had a pacifier (now nail-biter), my other daughter sucks her thumb, my cousin sucked her finger.

fortunately we seem to outgrow the finger sucking but the nail-biting seems to stick around for life. i don't think you can get your son to change unless he wants to, and he probably won't for a long time. as other posters said, it's an unconscious habit.

on a brighter note, my daughter seems to do it less now a few years later (with no action on my part). now she mostly does it when she's going to sleep. at least you have a boy who won't be expected to have nice nails.

of course if he's not the orally-fixated type, i guess i can't help you much other than to say that if he's a stubborn child, making a big issue of it will only make him dig in his heels more. just try keeping his hands busy. maybe give him something small to carry around and play with or touch so he doesn't stick his hands in his mouth.

if he doesn't want to be doing it either, using the nail biting stuff might work but it he doesn't want to quit (and was as stubborn as i was), he'll just bite through the nasty taste and get used to it.

Its normal Your son's behavior excited, bored, anxiety or etc that it effects to his biting nails. I have problem to biting my nails in my life. It's normal by behavior that I took the workshop called positive behavior support. It's for all people's behavior in 24 hrs everydays. Try to wear gloves and make forgot about bite nails or keep busy to do activities by hands like crafts, draw, or toys.

K.

My son, who just turned 3 two weeks ago, started biting his nails in September. We did have a major change in his life - starting preschool. Beyond that, everything was normal and he was acting fine. He finally stopped biting his nails about three weeks ago, on his own, after trying the no biting nail stuff and taking his hands out of his mouth every time I saw him biting them. My best advice is to ignore it. If he doesn't have any stressors in his life, he's probably doing it because he's bored or has just discovered something new and "fun," and it will pass when it's not new anymore.

My son did this when he was about 4. There wasn't anything behind it, he just started. It was funny, because I never saw him. I just realized that I wasn't needing to clip his nails. I eventually put two and two together, and then witnessed it. I had to get pretty tough. I started giving his hand a little slap when saw him doing it. Your's maight be a little young, but I also told him that he could get worms (which he really could). It took a couple of weeks, but he quit and he hasn't done it again. I praised him so much the first time I had to clip his nials.

I went through this with my daughter. This is the only thing that worked.

http://www.jessicacosmetics.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=...

one of the things that helped me was knowing what fingernails are made of. They are the particles left in your body that don't flush out.
you can also try putting something that doesn't taste very good on his nails.
hop this helps