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Behaviour: Ask the experts

Behaviour: Ask the experts

Contemporary Pediatrics. May 1999 v16 i5 p35.
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NAIL BITING

Q: Quite a few parents in my practice are distressed that their children bite their fingers and nails. Old-fashioned cures, like putting hot sauce on the fingers, don't seem practical. Any suggestions?

Steven Hauben, MD
Phoenix, AZ

A: When I am asked about how to get children to stop biting their nails, two questions come to mind:

* Why do they need to stop?

* How do you get adults to stop biting their nails?

Let me answer the second question first. You don't get adults to stop biting their nails unless they want to since nothing is really wrong with biting one's nails. Nail biting looks unattractive and the nails never look very nice, but we let adults decide on the importance of these issues. In the scheme of bad habits, nail biting is really minor league.

On the other hand, we all want our children to stop biting their nails for the same reasons: It doesn't look right and their nails look terrible. About the only reason to worry about a child who bites his nails is that the habit may be a stress response--a red flag for other problems. Nail biting is rarely the sole symptom of stress, however.

Most people suggest using a bad-tasting clear nail polish to stop nail biting, but this technique hardly ever works. A daily sticker reward system can sometimes be effective.

To sum up, I would rarely do anything about nail biting. I would make sure that something unusually stressful is not going on in the child's life. Beyond that, I would give the habit little extra attention, though I might set up a reward system for stopping. Finally, I would suggest to the family that there are more Important battles to fight and encourage them to ignore the nail biting.

Leonard Rappaport, MD
Boston, MA