He'll hate me when he's older but I have to ask

stever

DS1 is a chronic toenail chewer and it's skeeving me out. Any ideas for getting him to stop?

gimmietimmies

What auntie said. Worked for K. ::shudders::

stever

I hear you ladies, but what if he chew on them so much that there's never enough to trim? He's pretty compulsive about it.

mwd

Threaten to paint them a  glittery pink.  I did that DS who was sucking his fingers during the day, and I wanted to break him of that. He was mortified and stopped. If that doesn't work,  I got nothing. 

Ilumine

We used a topical application you can get at places like Walgreen.  It was called Thumb.  It is very very bitter tasting.  

stever

mwd said:

Threaten to paint them a  glittery pink.  I did that DS who was sucking his fingers during the day, and I wanted to break him of that. He was mortified and stopped. If that doesn't work,  I got nothing. 

That might work, I painted his nails blue(per his request) when he seemed to NOT be biting them anymore, but threatening to paint them pink might do the trick.

stever

Ilumine said:

We used a topical application you can get at places like Walgreen.  It was called Thumb.  It is very very bitter tasting.  

I remember that stuff from when I was a kid. Do you know what it's made of? I considered it but am nervous about its ingredients.

Ilumine

I do not remember.  The stuffs is xtra ordinarily TART and givne my DD would peel and eat a lemon, it didn't really work well.  So we moved onto hotsauce.  

Now, I ONLY did this for the nail biting, which I caught in the first couple of days, so she had not formed the HABIT.  So it only took two days of the hotsauce on her fingers to get her to stop, because she still sucks her thumb.  She wanted to suck her thumb more than bite her nails. 

I stress this because hotsauce CAN get in the eyes and that HURTS.  But I knew deep down that she would choose thumb sucking for nail biting.  And right now, her jaw/teeth are fine and she only sucks her thumb at night for the 20 min it takes to fall asleep.  

Skeemer

My brother once put some kind of anti bite nailpolish on my fingernails to keep me from biting. His wife had it or something. (I'm 10 years younger than him so he basically did whatever he wanted to aggravate me, lol) Not sure if they still make it but he put it on me & the next time I put my fingers in my mouth it was NASTY. Very bitter tasting & clear in color.

I just Googled. This came up - THUM Thumb sucking & nail biting treatment.