I have a 9 year old ds in year 5 and he has always been one for 'habits'. Examples of these are persistently wiping his nose, rolling his eyes, opening his eyes wide, exaggerated blinking etc and each of these last for a period of time, and then he moves on to another.
The thing is, at the moment he has 3 on the go all at once, and they are all noisy.
The worst to hear is snorting (not grunting) which he says he does because the back of his nose is itchy. He does this maybe 20 times a minute, sometimes with each breath! He also sniffs LOADS and also does a quick 'wheeze' where he breaths out really quickly, between the snorting again, 15-20 times a minute. Obviously sometimes it is worse than others and he may go a minute with only doing them a couple of times.
It is driving me MAD!
Because it sounds so impolite - snorting is not a nice sound- I do get cross and plead with him to try and stop, but even when I am pleading, he is still doing it!
I know I shouldn't but I feel embarrassed when he does it in front of other people. (I don't let him see this btw). I only try and get him to stop at home.
Tonight I am taking him to the doctors because I am worried that the constant snorting is damaging his nose, when he blows it sometimes there is blood in the tissue. He hasn't had a cold recently so seems unrelated to illness. He is happy at school, although does have an ongoing bullying problem with a boy in his class which is getting better due to teacher input and is more irritating to him rather than upsetting iyswim.
How do I manage this? Persistent noise/movement has always bugged me, I remember my dad always jigging his leg and it drove me crazy, but at least with that you don't have to look, with noise it is unavoidable and sometimes I hate being in the same room as him because I don't want to say anything horrible. It is SO hard not to say anything!
Has anyone had experience of this kind of thing, and most importantly, when did it stop!!!??