Habits: A case for comfort

The personal habits of some children may disgust or annoy adults, but carers can see them as a guide to a child's emotional state, says Juliet Brown

Common childhood habits - rocking, thumb-sucking, hair-twiddling, nose-picking and nail-biting - are repetitive ways of providing comfort and reducing tension. Most children try out one or other of these forms of self-comfort and stress reduction before they reach school age. Whether the habit persists can depend upon how adults respond to it.

Your own reaction to children's habits will depend upon what you know about the reasons for habits and how you feel about the habits in question. Your own feelings may depend on what childhood habits you had yourself and whether your parents ignored them or disapproved of them. Your feelings may also relate to what habits you have now, such as smoking, gum-chewing or consuming chocolate or alcohol. If you yourself need a habit to manage stress, you are more likely to understand that children do too.

Thumb-sucking Thumb-sucking begins in the womb and it's not long after birth that babies can get the habit under their control. This is one of babies' most effective ways of comforting themselves, their first move towards self-sufficiency. A baby who can use her thumb to calm herself and to help herself to wait for attention makes life easier for her mother. Since thumbs don't get lost, they are preferable to dummies, but some parents prefer their child to have a dummy because they can control it better than a thumb.

As babies grow older they may combine sucking a thumb or a dummy with cuddling a blanket. The blanket may become as important as the thumb and the child will insist that it has to be taken everywhere.

Dummies and comfort blankets naturally get taken to nurseries. You may welcome them as useful pacifiers, but you should be aware that children can depend too much on them. A toddler who trails his blanket around all day, or a three-year-old whose thumb is always in her mouth, is not feeling secure. They will need individual attention and some help in enjoying activities which involve the use of both hands. Children will be able to reduce their reliance on habits when they learn they can come to you for comfort, interest and support instead.

One typical example was Gerald, who made frequent use of thumb-sucking from the time he was six weeks old. By the time he was two-and-a-half he only thumb-sucked at bedtime and moments of unusual stress. It was then that he started attending a day nursery and his mother was dismayed to learn from the staff that his thumb was never out of his mouth. This surprised her, since he separated from her easily and seemed his usual self at home. She realised that he was finding the transition to nursery more difficult than she'd thought.

Gerald's mother was pleased when nursery staff suggested that she should stay for half an hour each morning while he settled in. The link that his mother made with his carer each morning seemed to help Gerald feel more secure. He found he could manage increasingly well without the reassurance provided by his thumb.

Rocking Rocking is a form of self-comfort which is seen less often in nurseries, as children mostly use it to get to sleep at night. A few children will rock themselves to sleep at nap time, and this can be a very noisy business with head-banging on the cot or banging the cot against the wall. As long as the activity can be muffled so that it does not keep other children awake, it is harmless and can be allowed to run its natural course.

Nail-biting Nail-biting often begins between three and five years. You may know that the habit is harmless, but badly bitten nails are unsightly and they may also become sore. Like other means of managing tension, nail-biting tends to increase at times of stress, such as when a favourite nursery nurse is absent or a new sibling is born.

Parents often find nail-biting a very annoying habit. They worry that it may be a sign of deprivation or deliberate intention to annoy them. As a nursery nurse, you have the advantage that you do not have to take the habit personally and so you should find it easier to ignore.

Sally was a girl who began to bite her nails before naps and at storytime in one nursery when she was nearly four years old. At first she did it quite unselfconsciously, but when she began to hide what she was doing staff realised that her parents must be trying to stop the habit. When asked, Sally's mother explained that she 'tapped' Sally's hand whenever she saw her biting her nails.

A battle had started which only Sally could win. She became a determined nail-biter and soon her nails were bitten to the quick. It took her until the age of 12 to develop sufficient self-control to give up the nail-biting habit in order to win the reward of a bicycle.

Nose-picking Nose-picking and hair-twiddling are other ways of reducing tension which, like nail-biting, may soothe children but are quite irritating to adults.

Peter, aged four years, liked to withdraw for a little session of nose-picking after periods of excited play. Staff tolerated this behaviour until he began to eat his 'bogies'. They found the habit repellent and kept telling him to stop being so disgusting. But this had no effect. One day staff member Caroline commented in a friendly way how much he enjoyed eating 'bogies'. 'Yes,' said Peter, 'I've got a restaurant in there and the waiters bring me meals.' Staff were amused to know what this habit meant to Peter. Tactfully they asked Peter to visit his restaurant inside the playhouse where they wouldn't have to watch.

Adult responses There is, of course, almost no limit to the habitual behaviour children can invent. Other common habits include sucking on tongues, the inside of cheeks or garments. Some children repetitively stroke their cheeks or chew their cuffs.

And of course, most children masturbate. Although this is an entirely normal aspect of child development, because of the worry which it often causes adults, and because of its occasional association with sexual abuse, I shall be covering the subject in a separate article later in the autumn.

Children tend to withdraw and become completely self-absorbed while they practise habits. Adults can find this loss of contact very annoying. It makes them want to butt in to reclaim the child's attention.

Of course, sometimes the child has withdrawn because she is lonely and bored and adult attention is exactly what is needed. At other times she may be using the habit to master privately some inner tension of her own. This privacy needs to be respected.

Most habits will be gradually outgrown as children find more mature ways to manage conflicts. They are only likely to become entrenched if adults resent them and try to prevent them outright. If you don't feel able to endure the sight of a child's habit, try distracting him or ask him to do it somewhere out of sight.

Because habits are an indicator of stress, they serve the useful purpose of drawing our attention to children who are finding it hard to cope. You will notice the difference between a child's normal, casual use of a habit and the anxious exaggeration of it which indicates that the child is experiencing a problem that you ought to think about.