my 3 year old chews her fingers!

[TiredBunny]

Help... any ideas about how i can get her to stop. SHe was quite a distressed baby and started it then.... I got rid of her dummy a year ago and now she chews her fingers, toys.... anything really. She is making her fingers sore!

No advice sorry , just to say my 4 year old has picked up annoying habits they seem to come in phases. First it was sleeve chewing then he started to chew the front of his jumper. Next came stretching all his clothes so we wore them in an off the shoulder style! The latest was licking his lips , he made them so sore they cracked & bled. The latest is wiping his mouth & cheek against his arm he now has a permenantly red cheek. In his case it does pass but then gets replaced with something else. The more i make an issue of it the more he does it. Hpoefully someone will come along who can help us both!!

Tiredbunny, I think it must be the age as my ds has started doing this, as well as the sleeve & coat chewing that coldtea was talking about.

I've constantly told ds to stop but he still does it all I can suggest is that you look out for little catches of skin when you cut her nails and take them off to to stop her fingers getting too sore. This is what I do and it seems to help but the chewing habit is driving me nuts - even more annoying when he won't eat his dinner so he's definitely not hungry!!!

Beginning to think he'll just have to get sore fingers, then he might understand why I tell him not to do it Let me know if you get any better suggestions?!

I thought about putting plasters on her fingers but then thought she might choke on them. SHe has hard skin where she has chewed them so much. thought about putting something yukky on them but didnt know what?!

Dd, 2.5, has recently started doing this too. She chews and also picks at the ends of her fingers and they look red raw and often get little splits in the skin which bleed and never heal as she picks them even more when they split. I do cover them with plasters when she's up and about and take them off when she goes to bed. Doesn't help much but I don't know what else to do.

dd 3.5 has nearly stopped puting her fingers in her mouth. Doesn't sound much but it was constant and came out of nowhere. She was constantly dribling, red mouth, wet fingers - yeuch.

We got her to stop putting objects in her mouth by threatening to put stuff in the bin. After some months of threats we eventually threw something she didn't care about in the bin. It seems to have worked.

I hadn't thought about the fingers until I read this conversation and realised we've stopped saying OUT YOUR MOUTH constantly.

BEKSmum must be right - it must be their age