Reply to What do you think of nail biters?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "What do you think of nail biters?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a nailbiter (age 41) and always have been.  I know it makes me look unpolished, uncouth, anxious, or some combination of all of the above, but I still cannot stop.  I do think there probably *is* a connection to anxiety b/c I do take medication for depression/anxiety, but unlike some other PPs, this medication, while it does help me, doesn't seem to be able to do anything about the nail-biting.  I was a thumb-sucker when I was little and I personally (my own uneducated opinion!) think my parents forced me to wean from that too early, and therefore I really picked up the nailbiting hardcore.  I remember them putting socks on my hands, taping up my thumb with masking tape, etc. to prevent me from thumb-sucking, and it was a really long and upsetting process for me.  Who knows.[/quote]

Similar experience (37-year-old nailbiter).  [/quote]

41yo back.  I can still distinctly taste the masking tape in my mouth, the sensation of my trying to suck my thumb with the masking tape taped over it.  Craziness.  Eventually of course the top layers of the tape would peel off.  Again:  craziness, now, when I think about this as an adult. I was so glad when I realized my now 6yo DD doesn't seem to have any of this going on.  People are just different, I guess!  But one thing I did do with her, differently is:  when I saw her picking at her fingernails and toenails (at bedtime, after I put her in bed, and then I'd discover the evidence in the a.m.) when she was about 4-5, I realized that she wanted to even out her nails and that was just something she wanted to do in her bed after we put her to sleep, so I gave her (probably against majority parenting judgment) a pair of manicure scissors to keep in her room on her dresser and she can go and get those anytime she wants and prune and cut and shape her own nails anytime she wants.  I figured it was better to let her do it this way, with scissors, than to get her into a biting and picking habit, which she then may fight for a lifetime to get rid of. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics