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.