Goals Reached

Sometime this summer Elijah suddenly started biting his nails.  I don’t mean he started chewing the extra length off, I mean he started gnawing them to bleeding stubs.  I’m not sure what brought it on, but the plus side is that he stopped picking his nose!  We did the standard methods of breaking a habit by telling him to stop, bribing, and putting bad tasting stuff on them, but then he just mutilated them while he was alone in bed.  Next, we put gloves on him when he slept.  This method brought it down to an acceptable level but he chewed holes in his gloves to get to his nails.  We even asked the pediatrician about it while we were there for Joshua and she had us test for parasites (apparently those symptoms are common for kids with parasites), but surprisingly, he had none :) 

Josiah has been a thumb sucker pretty much since birth.  Somewhere around 2 years old we told him he could only do it in the car and in bed and, surprisingly, he obeyed.  A few months later we restricted it to the bed only.  We never forbade it in bed because we enjoyed the wonderful sleep habits it promoted :) but about the time he started VPK we started encouraging him to stop on his own, though we never insisted since we figured we couldn’t enforce it.

Finally, it dawned on me when we were in the grocery store checkout line and the boys were begging for gum of their own, that I could use it to my benefit.  Right then I told Elijah that if his nails got long enough that I had to cut every one of them, then he could pick his own gum.  I told Josiah that if the callous on his favorite thumb was gone then he could pick some out.  Poor guy couldn’t help that that thumb kept slipping into his mouth while he slept!

Today was the day!  Elijah picked out gum and Josiah picked out Tic Tacs!  They were both so excited and are sharing their rewards with anyone who will accept.  I’m so happy for them!  (And I’m biting my nails in hopes that the habits will stick!)