Wen 丨 Forest Mommy
A friend's child was very fond of eating hands before 30 months ago, resulting in some deformation of her fingernails and no growth.
The family used a lot of methods: bitterly reasonable, as soon as she saw her eating hands, she went to stop, also coated with bitter melon juice, and even hit her small hands, but always looked down on her, corrected for 2 months without any effect, the more she said the more skiny, for this she was very distressed.
Children like to eat their hands before the age of 1, which is a physiological sucking requirement, especially when they are young, often suck their fingers in hunger or sleep to comfort themselves, and gradually fade after the age of 2.
Because this stage is the baby's oral desire period, oral touch is one of the most important ways for babies to explore, no matter what he likes to put in his mouth.
Eating hands is a sign that the intellect has begun to develop, indicating that the child has the ability to cooperate with each other in different clusters, and it is also a normal way for the child to comfort himself. Parents do not need to intervene, just pay attention to the safety and hygiene of what the baby comes into contact with.
But after the child's appetite period, the older child chooses to eat hands is a bad habit.
Children eating their hands may be caused by the child's physical and psychological factors. Children sucking fingers mostly occurs when they are lonely, tired, depressed, sleepy, and hungry, and the number of separation anxieties and illness increases, and if they are forcibly stopped, they will play a negative role in strengthening.
I remember when I was in elementary school, there was a male classmate who was a single parent, and my mother was not particularly good-tempered, and we were all afraid of her.
The male classmate has a timid personality, but he is very tall, like a fifth- or sixth-grade student. He liked to eat his hands, and his mother and teachers supervised him, painted him nail polish, applied bitter melon juice, beat him or punished him.
Say it's for his own good, because he eats his fingers and his nails have been badly deformed. The result seemed to be counterproductive, becoming more and more serious, until I graduated from elementary school, he still had a problem with eating hands.
I don't know if he finds a sense of security in eating fingers, children don't know what it means to be good for you, and I don't know what the result will be after eating his hands all the time.
Parents should not be angry because the results of anger are not necessarily good.
We must accompany more, guide more, block is not as good as sparse, loose is not as good as lead.
The more she is forced, the more nervous the child is, the more difficult the habit is to change, even if it is changed, the child's real needs are not met, they are all backlogged in the heart, and sooner or later they will be released through other means.
In the past, my son also liked to eat hands, not because of nervousness, but because of habits, when I happened to see an audio picture book, called "I Don't Eat Hands Anymore", the author was Kuseinae, so I used this picture book to make children easily change the habit of eating hands.
In the picture book, a little girl is about to go to elementary school, but she still can't get rid of the problem of eating hands.
Mom wrapped bandages around her hands, sister smeared mustard on her hands, and Dad reprimanded her, but there was still no way, and when she slept, she always unconsciously put her hands into her mouth.
Until one day, a cocoon grew on her hand, and as she ate her hands day by day, the cocoon gradually grew and began to speak.
The little girl was very afraid, she was afraid that one day this cocoon would grow bigger than her, and when she went to school, her classmates would mock her.
She made up her mind and told herself not to eat any more hands.
On the first day, the second day, until the seventh day, she didn't eat her hands.
Slowly the cocoon faded and became weaker, so the cocoon said to the little girl, "Please, eat me again, just eat me once, and I will leave."
The little girl was really deceived, and once again, Cocoon suddenly regained her vitality, looked at her with a smile, and Cocoon said: "Haha, you really still can't bear me."
The little girl did not answer her, but looked puzzled, she did not know why she liked to eat hands so much before, because it was not so delicious.
So she stopped eating, even if the cocoon ended up pretending to be pitiful. This bad problem was changed, and the cocoon gradually disappeared, and I went to find another little friend.
When I saw this picture book, I said to my child:
You see this little sister because of eating hands, the hands grow cocoons, and finally the cocoon disappears, it will continue to look for the children who eat hands.
If you continue to eat the cocoon will appear, and it will grow slowly until it finally grows bigger than you.
The child was very unhappy, so I told him, you don't want to have a cocoon, right? He nodded.
Since then, as soon as the child eats his hand, I will tell him this, and she will consciously take it down.
From eating many times a day, to eating two or three times a day, and finally not eating hands, completely changing the bad problems.
I found that many problems encountered by 0-3-year-old babies in life can find picture books with relevant themes, and when it is difficult for us to reason with children, a good picture book can be easily solved and change children's living habits.
And in the process of parent-child reading, the child also feels a rare intimate time, feels the love and tenderness of the mother, a habit of eating hands, what can not be changed?