4 Year Old Eating Vaseline & Moisturiser

[Baldilocks]

I have a 4 year old (5 in June) who has always had a terrible habit of putting inappropriate things in her mouth. We were hoping that she would grow out of this, but she seems to be getting worse. Last week she asked if she could put some of my handbag size vaseline on her lips and off she went to the bedroom to get it. As all went quiet I went to see what she was doing and found she had eaten most of the tub! Then, at the weekend, I caught her squirting out a huge blob of Oilatum cream and eating that!

We had parents' evening last week at school and her teacher also commented that she is always putting things like blue tak and paint in her mouth.

Both me and her dad and her nan and grandad have tried talking to her about why it is not a good idea to do this (poorly tummy, might have to go to hospital, one day she might put poison in her mouth, etc), but just wondered if anyone else out there has experience of this as she doesn't seem to understand the severity of what she's doing.

Help!

not much help but I was much the same as a child (up until the age of about 10 actually!) my particular favourites were nivea and that lumpy water glue you use for papier mache....

what does she say if you ask her why she does it?

just had a thought - I only have one DS and he's 2.5 so not much experience of 4 yr olds - is asking her why feasible?

Oh well, that's reassuring actually that you did it too. I take it you have grown up with no probs!

When I tackle her about it she just clams up or, in the case of the Oilatum, she said she was hungry! I think she knows it's wrong, but I am worried that she will eat something dangerous one day.

yeah, no damage from eating whole tubs of nivea. I've realised since my first post that I still tend to chew pens, bite my nails and so on. pretty gross really :0 I couldn't tell you why I ate the stuff I did but strangely enough it was always harmless lotion and potions, sensodyne toothpaste was another love of mine...I think I just "knew" from smell and texture which things to avoid.

she will grow out of it eventually. There was a particularly traumatic episode with cotton that cured me of most of my strange eating habits though.

Baldilocks - just to reassure a bit more i used to love eating wax crayons as a child, my mum said it gave me lovely rainbow poos!!!! sure she'll grew out of it.

If she claims to be hungry why not have a snack box containing something like carrots or cuecumber or other nibbly things which she can help herself to but you don't mind her eating, perhaps she is trying to be helpful and not make extra work for you by eating something to habd rather than getting you to make her something, equally she could just be trying to ascert her own independance by getting herself something to eat!! The other possibility is that she has mistook what face cream is for, i.e she's seen you squirting it out but not ever watch closely enough to see you rub it in not eat it? just a couple of thoughts

Katzguk - thanks for your suggestion of a snack box (although I really don't think she is hungry, because when she genuinely is she usually comes and asks for something). What I'll do though is get a box together and give it to her and tell her that if she wants to put something in her mouth then she can use anything she likes out of the box. By the way, she knows exactly what the Oilatum cream is for as it is her cream (that's why it was in her room)that we use to keep her eczema at bay! I'm reassured that you used to do this too!

Marialuisa - thanks again for your note. I must say that Katie does only seem to put fairly innocuous stuff in her mouth - let's hope it stays that way. I'm intrigued by the "cotton incident"!

Cheers to both of you.
x

This has brought back fond memories of sharing a large tub of my mum's lemon face cream with my bestest childhood friend at an age I'm embarrassed to mention.

25, maybe, scummy?

er.. not quite that old, janh. I think we were about 11 or 12 tho . Talk about late developers, eh?

oh I don't know, at that age I was busily adopting the dolls houses all my friends had grown out of.

At about 6 my brother ate a firelighter and I tried a bunch of daffodils. Both were very sick and didn't try it again - you learn by your mistakes! & we're both still alive and healthy btw...