Helping to Cure Nail Biting in Children

[Wooshka]

Hypnotherapy is a good non-invasive solution and can work with children from as young as 4 years providing you have a competent therapist. You can stay with the child at the sessions, so it's quite safe.

I wouldn't be keen on DIY approaches such as the 'germ therapy' mentioned above, as this risks the child developing serious phobias into adulthood which can detrimentally affect their lives.

As I stated my daughter already has a germ phobia so my actions did NOT cause a germ phobia nor would it be likely to cause a phobia unless the child is already very emotionally/mentally unstable which I'm sure the OP's sister is not......the reason I say this is, my daughter has 4 therapy sessions per week with 2 professionals and I discussed this issue with her therapists at great length first and asked if it would cause concern doing something like this and I was advised it would not and it would more than likely achieve exactly what I wanted, which was for her stop biting her nails and it did work.

Now I'm not saying this strategy is for everyone, my point I'm trying to get across is, this is an extreme problem to the people who bite their nails, it's like trying to give up smoking, it's a really hard habit to crack and it usually needs a hard core approach to make them stop and this approach worked for me/her.
For an 8 yr old, of course you would have to find something age appropriate and specifically targeted at that childs personality to have a chance at success.

Trust me, as a parent of a child with MANY disabilities of varying degrees, when I do something like this, I do not do it without professional advice first and this is why I told my story in the first place, maybe I should have stated that it was approved by professionals first to avoid it being seen as something that will only cause phobias in a person.
If it was that simple to cause a phobia, then lord forbid, no one could ever own a pet or if they did own one, they could never walk outside in their back yard and see dog poop.

Just to also clear up any more undue thoughts.......the dog poop I used was a small amount ( about a tea spoon amount) and was very old and dried out, so it wasn't as if I threw a pile of soft yucky smelly poop in front of her.
It proved a point that there are many germs in both areas (nails and dog poop) and no one in their right mind unless they have pica, would go around chomping on dog poop, would they now?
No, so why would you bite your nails, knowing the same germs are there too
Pretty much the same thing as the poster who mentioned someone saying about licking their bottom.

 

[Wooshka]

This is harsh but was my way.

Erin and harry started nibbling after being around.family members that are nail biters.

I started off by getting two large haribo bags of sweets on a Monday morning. Everytime i caught them nibbling i ate a sweet (i pretended too... diabetic) whatever sweets were left in the.bag the.following.Sunday they got to keep! harry likes to gel his hair and Erin is nuts.about all things colourful...minx, glitter etc. i told them i would refuse to do her nails or allow her her own little polished and wouldn't let harry use gel until a Sunday came where they had a full bag of sweets and a decent set of nails.... It took Erin 3 weeks, harry 5!

No products. Just a common goal! Erin now has minx every school holiday!

Good luck xxx

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No not harsh, just your way of dealing with a really bad habit that is really hard to break. You know your kids the best and know what their currency is and you found a way to make it work in their favor.
Good on you!!!!!

I thought about using food but with my daughters problems, we worked out it wouldn't work or have the impact we needed it to.