Fingernail Biting

Once the child begins fingernail biting, it usually becomes difficult to stop. This becomes a tic, the child puts his hand on his mouth and bite one's nails, not to realize this, and moral and teasing can not do much about it, the child stops the moment, but later, without realizing it, he finds himself with the hand in mouth.

The causes for child fingernail biting can be many, especially of psychological origin. At first, the child bites his nails because he sees other children and tries to imitate, but then he bites the nails as a psychological comfort when he is anxious, stressed, or when he has emotions including fear. Fingernail biting is usually a relatively frequent met among children but also adolescents and adults. Infants generally do not bite their nails, but the number of children who have this habit increases proportionally with age, most of them schoolchildren. Psychologists believe that the No. 1 cause of fingernail biting is stress. There are many opinions some believe that it is usually genetically inherited; others think it is usually taught.

Some experts feel that fingernail biting is strongly related to thumb sucking. It seems that this usually occurs especially in children who suck their thumb, but there are enough children bearing their nails without being sucked his thumb ever. Fingernail biting is caused by stress, is a sign of tension and strain and is more common in hyperactive and agitated children, the most sensitive to worry about easy, those that found in fingernail biting emotional relief when they are at school or be put in difficulty.

Some events considered normal in adult life can be stressful for a child, such as death of a closed relative, parents’ divorce, change of house, afraid of the answers at school, reading stories at bedtime or watching a movie. First of all identified situations that cause fingernail biting and corrected or eliminated as possible so that only will get off due to eliminating the behavior.  If you are beaten in the head, punished or hit over hand, rarely do children give up this habit. So the best would be to have a discussion with the child in which to explain this behavior is bad and wondered if it agrees to help him give up the habit.



Try to explain them that the bitten nails will grow ugly, will be short and will break soon, and besides the aesthetics, fingernail biting can cause bleeding or infection. Besides these aspects would have to say and that hands are dirty, and accumulate more dirt under nails, so once you go hand to mouth contact favors germs. If the child is willing to make some efforts to abandon the habit, set along a verbal or nonverbal code that can alert him when his nails off involuntarily. If you have a girl, encouraging her to give up fingernail biting, in order to get a nice manicure and reward her with a manicure at a beauty salon. If you notice that your child is going through a period of physical depression, you should tell him that fingernail biting is not the most appropiate behavior to going through a tough time.