Should I worry about this habit?

[Bean74]

Hi

Dd is 7 & has a strange habit of frantically rubbing pages of a book while she is reading. It started off with her using a 'reading finger' but now she holds her book on her left hand & then rub, flicks & generally fiddles with the page with her right hand. It's been going on for about a year now. When I ask her about it she gets defensive & says she can't read unless she is doing it.

She is a good reader & enjoys books so I don't want to put her off but equally I don't want her being mocked about it when she goes up to the Junior school.

She also thumb sucks & frantically rubs her cuddly bunny at night to get to sleep. Is this a normal habit or something I should get checked out as she seems to do this finger rubbing as a means of relaxing / concentrating.

Any advice would be great.

Have you spoken to her teacher Bean?

Teacher picked up on it & suggested she use a bookmark, which she did successfully for a while but now she refuses to use it. Back to square one.

I would 'errr' on the side that this is a developmental thing for the time being if all is well otherwise but I am not a specialist? I would say from your short post that she does have some sort of sensory need but many kids do. Loads of kids stroke ears, pensil cases, soft toys etc. Could you get a fluffy bookmark that could be rubbed instead of the book? Something she will take comfort in? Might help to relax her a little?

I have had two thumbsuckers who also rubbed their stuffed animals for comfort. This is definitely normal.

They did not however rub anything else (like book pages), so I can't help you there sorry.

Is it likely she might be anxious and this is a coping mechanism for her? (Sorry not much help.)

Could she have created a sort of superstition/ritual? So reading makes her anxious but she thinks if she strokes page it will be ok. So a reassurance comfort thing which has now become a bit if a superstitious ritual? I created things like this all the time when I was a child... In which case probably good to talk to her about it, to try and help her recognise that the ability for her to read comes from her, and not from the finger stroking.

It sounds like she is doing it as a comfort thing, Hand in Hand parenting has some good advice for how to handle thumb sucking. They have a good article here www.handinhandparenting.org/news/54/64/No-More-Thumb-No-More-Pacifier

Oh and maybe you could try something similar to what is suggested in the article for the page rubbing as well.