Early Years

Another cold, wintry day, plus dry Santa Anas, and my son returns from kindergarten sporting what we call a clown mouth: Nervous lip-licking and the weather have chapped his mouth. A bright, painfully red area extends beyond his lips. At a distance, he does look like a little Emmet Kelly, but close up, we see the stinging pain, the result of a habit that we, his parents, have been trying to help him break.

Parents encounter other bad habits: thumb-sucking. Nail-biting. Hair-pulling. Teeth-grinding. Head-banging. Foot-tapping. Often, more than one; and often, simultaneously.

What’s a parent to do? Check in with William and Martha Sears. In their classic text, “The Discipline Book,” they observe that the expression “‘break a habit’ has some biological truth to it.” A child’s growing brain has “miles of electrical wires. As the child learns and grows, he makes connections between all those nerve wires, storing patterns of association. Patterns of behavior that are repeated over and over again become habits that the child performs without thinking. To break the habit, you have to put a roadblock in the nerve pathway where the habit is stored, breaking off the connection between the action and the circumstances that trigger it.”

How do you do THAT?!
First, the Sears say to ascertain whether the habit is a real problem. “If ignored, most habits eventually self-destruct, and if you intervene, you risk pushing the child from the frying pan into the fire.” A habit like thumb-sucking or hair-twirling may actually be a tension reliever. If forbidden, more distressing behavior could surface.

Some habits should be managed, not broken. How to decide? If the habit creates a health issue or subjects the child to teasing, it’s worth breaking. In our son’s case, the severely chapped mouth poses real, physical discomfort.

Next step: identify circumstances that trigger the behavior. Sometimes habits can be managed by being aware of when the behavior surfaces, then taking action to adjust those situations. When our son was a nail-biter extraordinaire, I noticed that much of that activity occurred during his limited video-watching time. Solution: I gave him a stuffed toy to hold. It became what the Sears call a “distracter” or substitute.

Which brings us to dialog. Behavior management requires the participation of your child. Create motivation. Talk about what people do and don’t do. Say “please” and “thank you,” and don’t burp at the table or pick your nose. Our son now carries ChapStick in his pocket, giving him responsibility and control – and a certain cachet, among his peers. His very own ChapStick, to go along with his own cold-season tissue and whatever else is in his pockets.

Lisa Alvarez is a contributing writer.