Bowl of Nails
A look of disgust crossed his face, when he saw what he had been eating the entire time
Loris was ten. And he couldn’t stop biting his nails.
Bitter nail polish, reminders, rewards and the other standard approaches hadn’t helped.
With his eyes closed, I asked him to describe his nail biting as if it were a person or character standing in front of him.
This is a technique I use regularly with habits and addictions. Giving them a face, a personality, and a presence. It’s much harder to keep doing something when you’ve decided you don’t actually like the person/character asking you to do it.
He described his nailbiting as a nervous little character. Small body, oversized head. Fidgety.
We then had a lengthy interaction with his personified nailbiting.
Is this someone likeable?
Someone you would want as a friend?
Someone who has your best interest at heart?
Loris didn’t think so.
Next we focused on the nasty part of nailbiting.
(From experience, I know how tenacious nail biting can be, and that sometimes the only way to stop it is by helping the child develop an aversion to it. This may seem unconventional, but it works — shifting from comfort to disgust.)
I asked him if he likes eating hair. He did not. In fact he said the thought of eating hair made him feel sick. He then learned that both hair and fingernails are built by the body from the same material.
He sat with that for a moment.
Then, we calculated, how many nails he had already eaten and swallowed in the last few years.
He visualized an entire bowl full of nails. Filled right to the top.
Loris started to look disgusted.
But I aimed for more.
I asked him to take some of those fingernails from the bowl and place them under a powerful microscope. To inspect all the creepy-crawly things that live underneath the nails.
This is the part where I let kids get creative. And I gladly help them out a bit with my own graphic ideas of what all that dirt and all those bacteria look like. Sometimes with sound effects for good measure.
At this point, he wasn’t just disgusted. Loris said he was starting to feel sick.
Perfect. This was exactly the shift we were aiming for. I asked him to lift his arm in real life and place any finger into his mouth — just as he did every day. The thought alone disgusted him so much that he refused. The image of the bowl of nails and the glimpse into the microscope had completely put him off.
“Are you sure you don’t want a small nibble?” I asked. “Nope,” he replied.
Having a child vividly visualize the true face of nail biting — and what they are putting into their body — is a powerful form of persuasion.
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