My 3 year old won't stop picking her nails

[hollyt60]

My 3 year old daughter has developed a habit of picking her finger and toe nails. I'm not sure how to break the habit, whenever we see her doing it we ask her to stop and try and distract her with something else but when I put her to bed we can see on the webcam that she's lying in bed doing this and it seems whenever you turn around she's at it. I'm not sure why she's started doing this, her nails are all now very low and some are getting sore.

I'm keen to stop her but unsure of tactics, I think she's too young for nail varnish but I did wonder whether clear gel would stop her being able to do it but not sure whether the chemicals are dangerous when she's so young.

Any ideas welcomed!

Bump - I'm having the same problem with my 3yo son. I would be interested to know how to stop this too!

My ds2 who is 5 does this. I have slightly ignored the finger nail biting for the moment and decided to focus on the toes. So I:

1. if I ever see him biting his toes during the day I tell him to stop (but without making too big a deal about it)
2. at night (when he bites his toes loads) I put plasters on his toes. We discuss which toes look tempting and whether he is going to be able to resist them. Any bit of nail visible is hard for him to resist. Sometimes he only has one plaster, but near the start he used to have loads!
3. take the plasters off in the morning.

He also bites the skin round the nail, mainly on his big toes so his big toes have plasters every night, and then which ever other toes he thinks he wants to bite.

This has really worked! We now have nice chats about how hard it is to resist biting, and he proudly told me that for two nights I had forgotten to do it and he had managed not to bite. Also his nails and skin are looking much smoother with less tempting edges so I am hopeful we can stop soon with the damn plasters. And I think he has lost the habit a bit as i can't remember when I last saw him with his foot in his mouth during the day.
Oh and since this was using a lot of plasters I use some of that white tape (for sticking bandages I think??) which comes easily off in the morning. We sometimes had a few toes taped, but now it's normally just his big toes.
So I think this has worked! But he is older than your dc op so may not be suitable idea, and they may not like the feel of the tape/plasters. And no idea what to do about the fingers!