If OT is not helping, maybe you should try another one. Or a cognitive behavioral therapist. Also I don't think having too many activities has anything to d I with this. If anything, keeping busy is probably better. I don't understand the molester part - is your child touching others inappropriately? If so, you definitely need to find other therapists who can work intensively on this. The middle elementary years can be very hard when kids have differences.

I'm autistic and have a lot of oral fixations. I sucked my thumb way too long, I bite my fingernails and skin, I chew on pen caps...It's very soothing.

My DD was a thumb sucker and incessant sleeve chewer. I bought her all types of OT bracelets and necklaces to chew to keep her from shredding her clothes! Gradually outgrew both habits by 9 years old. She's 11 now.

Ugh 32 year old here. Unless I get a manicure every week, I will chew my nails completely. Never outgrew it!

What an eye-opening thread! I bit my nails as a child, probably stopped after college (?) and smoked for about 5 years up through early 20s. I still kind of like to chew straws but not all that often. And I never connected this to molestation! I also never considered that I'd take my child to therapy for such a habit. Isn't this within the acceptable range of human behaviors? I do think the nail biting was stress related but isn't it a relatively benign form of dealing with stress?

Anonymous wrote:Bit my fingernails as a kid, now I pick at my skin. The thing is though, I'm super happy. It's just like this mild anxiety in the background that I don't even notice.

Me too. I've outgrown popping my zits but still bite my nails and pick my cuticles and pick at bumps on my arm. I'm 34. I can stop biting for a time but always end up doing it again subconciously usually when I'm nervous.

Bit my nails, chewed the skin around my finger nails, stuck pins into the dead skin around my nails, bit my toe nails (so gross), and am generally a horrible skin picker. It's tied to my anxiety and mild OCD. Now at 30 I get my nails manicured every 2 weeks and no longer do stuff like that. I still pick my skin unfortunately. I'm not a serial killer or anything like that, just bad at managing my anxiety.

I still bite my nails and chew on pens.

I sucked my thumb until I was 10 and bit my nails until my late 20s. Quit nail biting cold turkey when I got engaged - people kept asking me to show them the ring and I kept making a fist to do it. I was a violin player throughout childhood and college, so having short nails was kind of part of the deal and I never had an incentive to quit before that. I still chew pen caps to smithereens. Like other PPs, I'm not a particularly anxious person and did not have a problematic childhood. I have two kids, one of whom never picked up any of those habits, and the other of whom was a thumb-sucker until almost 4 and is a chronic nail biter. I am trying to get her to stop because she bites them so far down that I worry about infection. But she's not an anxious kid either!

I have always chewed my nails, pen caps, etc. I'm pretty sure it's an anxiety/stress thing, but aside from a serous bout of PPA, it's never really impacted me.

It's improved as I've gotten older, but I have very weak nails so they tend to grow out, a few break and then I bite the rest of them off. It's a horrible habit, but eh, what can you do.

OP, you lost me when you were worried about your son becoming a "molester." This I do not get. What does one have to do with the other?

I chewed things as a kid. Nails, pencils, put all kinds of things in my mouth. Chewed on my lips and the inside of my mouth. Sucked my thumb until I was 9. Smoked as a young adult.

Now I only chew the insides of my mouth and pick/chew the skin around my thumbnails. I was in 5th grade when I stopped biting my nails. Picking my skin has gotten better since I stopped smoking-for some reason, I picked my skin the most while I was smoking a cigarette.

I bit my nails my whole life until I switched to pt employment. So for me it was stress related.

43 and have always been a nail biter. In the 70s/80s, we did not know there was such a thing as OT and all the resources we have for our kids now, so all my parents did was always yell at me for biting my nails. Nowadays I'd take my kid to OT, but luckily, neither of my kids seems to have it.

The one thing I will offer, though: for a while, I would see my now 8yo picking and biting at her nails, fingers, cuticles, etc. I recognized that she was trying to "groom" them but "the wrong way" (picking, biting) so I bought her a girls' manicure set and made a big deal of how she could do this herself now. I thought to myself, "We'll see how this goes." (She was about. . .5? 6?) It did take off and that is what she uses now to groom her nails. So, I think, you could POSSIBLY try to redirect the fascination into doing it properly, with a manicure kit. Perhaps.

42 male. bite the crap out of my nails... i think its a habit a picked up from mom. and never stopped.

I have stopped and grew the nails outs, but they are very "flimsy" and get torn easily so I end up biting them down.

DD16 doen't bite her nails, but does pick at the nails and skin on the fingers.

I'm 47. I still chew on the collars of t-shirts.