ds chewing (and therefore destroying) all his clothes. wtf do I do?

[ErnestTheBavarian]

Driving me mad now.
ds is almost 8.
Chews everything absent mindedly. I watch him play football - he's chewing the vest. Most of his t shirts have teeth marks & holes all round the neck. All his cuffs are chewed to pieces. He has now chewed the zip off his brand new fleece.

It's costing me a fortune. He does it ll the time. I'm obviously not with him all the time. I can't make him buy new stuff - h can't affortd to replace these things.

just seen your post. yuk - toilet paper

I remember being partial to blu tak actually as a kid, Had a love hate relationship with my cuffs too now you mention school jumpers - loved chewing, but they sort of set my teeth on edge too

I'm quite fortunate with what my son (with AS) will eat. He is obsessed with the colour green, so will eat green things, sprouts, cabbage, green beans, broccoli, all those sorts of foods.

But he is STILL persisting in eating his coat! Can't persuade him to have something to chew on, the only way I can think of gettin him to stop is put something on that tastes horrible

DS1 does this ONLY with his Beavers jumper, I think he gets nervous/excited when he is there, a few of the others do it, so maybe they copy?

thanks for the zinc info, pagwatch. ds has started chewing sleeves constantly and now has red raw marks all around his mouth.

You might want to try Chewlery - it's designed to look like kids jewelry (even for boys) and can always be with them as it's on a lanyard. These guys sell them - store.mayer-johnson.com/uk/nsearch/?keywords=chewelry

Would second looking at zinc and iron supplements. My DS has verbal and oral dyspraxia and some sensory processing issues and chewed endlessly on clothes-really dont think he could help it-got MUCH worse when he had a cold-probably needed more proproceptive feedabck when bunged up! I gave him multi vit and zinc and worked a treat. Stopped the zinc and it started again...doesnt seem to work for everyone though...chewellry ok but doesnt stop the habit, just saves on clothes...I remember all the sopping wet sleeves/coat ends/gloves...yuk, yuk yuk!!
HTH