How To Prevent Children From Biting Their Nails

How can I prevent my children from biting their nails? You have probably asked yourself this question a million times. In fact, onychophagia – more commonly called nail biting – is something completely normal in childhood.

Many parents think that their children are biting their nails to get their parents’ attention, but this is not true. Most children bite their nails completely unknowingly – in other words, they do not even realize they are doing it.

There is no point in barking at them or even nagging them if they continue to bite. Below we give you some tips to prevent nail biting in children.

How to prevent your children from biting their nails

Talk to them

The first way to prevent children from biting their nails is by talking to them. As I said, it is pointless to shout, criticize or threaten your children when you see them bite.

It is important to understand that nail biting is in most cases a symptom of stress or nervousness. It may have to do with environmental factors or with a child’s personality. Barking at a child for biting his or her nails will therefore only make him or her more anxious and therefore make things worse.

Instead, ask calmly and tactfully, what your child is thinking at that moment and how the day has been. It can help you find out if there is something that worries your child or upsets him or her. In the case of children, nail biting is usually due to one of three reasons.

Anxiety

It is important to communicate with your child if he or she bites his or her nails. Find out what worries your child and try to help find a solution to the problem he or she is facing.

Habit

Nail biting is often associated with a specific activity that the child does, usually as a distraction – for example when the child is watching TV. In this case, you should check at what times your child bites on the nails and explain why it is a bad habit.

Imitation

Everyone knows that children imitate everything they see and experience, and this also applies to nail biting. Below we explain how you can help a child who bites his nails as an imitation.

How to prevent nail biting in children who imitate the above

Help each other to stop

It is a fact that nail biting is more common in children than in adults, but with that said, there are many who continue to bite their nails into adulthood.

If you are in this group, you should be made aware of two things. The first is that children imitate everything that happens around them, especially what their parents do.

If your children see you biting their nails, they will follow. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is avoid biting your nails in front of your children.

Second, you also need to stop biting your nails to help your child overcome this behavior.

But how to do it? We suggest that you ask your child to play a game with you. The person who sees the other when he or she bites the nails makes a specific gesture to the other as a reminder to stop.

In this way, the child takes more responsibility for his or her actions and gets a feeling that he or she is cooperating with his or her parents. In addition, when the child sees his or her parents overcoming his or her bad habits, he or she is likely to do the same.

Distract your child

As parents, we spend many hours observing what our children are doing. This means that you can stop the nail biting in its infancy before it becomes an unfamiliar one.

To do this, you can suggest an activity that requires your child to use his or her hands as soon as you see him or her with his or her fingers in his or her mouth, such as painting, drawing, putting together a puzzle, building a tower, playing with dolls, and so on.

Use the activity that your child likes best and that is close at hand so that the hands have other things to do as soon as possible.

Show your child your nails

If you do not bite your nails yourself, explain it to your child and show your hands. It helps him or her to see the benefits of having strong, healthy nails.