Don’t stress over nail-biting
So says Prof Alf Nicholson, consultant paediatrician at Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and co-author of When Your Child is Sick, What You Can Do to Help. He finds up to one in four young children nail-bite or suck their thumb. “It begins as a habit – the first instinct is to put the finger in the mouth.”
Describing it as “almost universal” he says it can emerge out of a kind of nervous energy. But it can just as easily happen out of boredom or curiosity. He counsels against making it a big deal.
