Help to stop DD aged 4

[cat88]

DD2 is almost 5 and still sucks her thumb and twiddles her belly button whilst she is doing it. We and nursery are trying to encourage her to stop playing with her belly button. However, she is still doing it and is not even aware she is doing it most of the time. We are concerned that it looks babyish and she will get teased at school . We have tried reward charts, lots of praise when not playing with belly button, painting her nails to stop thumb sucking as she rarely does one without the other, and long dressses which make it more difficult. however it is getting worse. any advice?

[cathan]

She is doing this to comfort herself and being pressured to stop will make it worse! Both my DD and DS had similar habits and stopped for themselves (by age 7 and 9 respectively). However, neither of them sucked at school after the first few days because of comments from the other children and at home the habits were gradually confined to bedtime. Since being encouraged to stop is not working for your DD, I would leave her to it. Once she is at school, she'll either stop for herself or not be bothered about what the others say, either of which will be fine. Too much fuss is made about this, in my opinion. After all, what harm is she doing? There are lots of worse habits a child can have.