Babies in early childhood always have some habits at this time, and liking to eat and sleep with their hands is a baby's quirk. In the eyes of parents, this can affect their baby's health and is a bad habit that needs help to be changed. However, what exactly causes children to eat and sleep with their hands. Tips for Quitting Preschoolers from Eating Hands and Sleeping? Let's take a look with the editor below.
What's wrong with children eating their hands and sleeping
This is a way of psychological comfort. For babies, eating their hands is also a way of soothing, helping them calm down their tension and anxiety. Just as adults feel at ease with familiar objects around them, babies can feel emotionally stable when they eat their hands. This is the same as other babies using pacifiers or plush toys to comfort themselves.
Hands are something that babies can see at all times, more intimate than pacifiers and plush toys. Since they taste good and can be eaten at any time, eating hands has naturally become a common game for babies of this age. When a baby is born, the movements of its limbs are unconscious.
After about 4 months of birth, babies have the ability to take out toys and put them in their mouths. At this point, children can distinguish the difference between toys and hands through the sensation of their mouth. After 6-8 months of birth, babies can perform complex movements such as throwing objects, touching hands, and imitating adult movements.
These are necessary conditions for the development of the nervous system. In addition, it is crucial for the development of the brain and the baby's body and muscles to engage in hand movements, such as gnawing on toys and consciously touching everything around them. So parents should be encouraged and not corrected. When babies eat and bite, it is necessary for parents to pay attention to the following issues.
Tips for Quitting Preschoolers from Eating Hands and Sleeping
We should actively guide our own babies to participate in various activities and games with rich content and diverse forms, so that their hands can move and distract their attention from eating. Children are most likely to eat their hands when they are lonely and bored. Allowing them to read books, play with building blocks, knead clay, jump rope, draw, and so on, makes them restless and unable to eat their hands. At the same time, it makes them feel and discover that there are more interesting things than eating their hands in enjoyable activities. In this way, children's bad habits of eating their hands will gradually be corrected unconsciously
During the period when babies bite their fingers, parents only need to keep their fingers clean and hygienic. If they want to quit, they just need to spend some time and let their children shift their attention. If they play, get tired of playing, or fall asleep, they will naturally forget about this habit of biting their fingers!
Adequate zinc supplementation. When education guidance and attention diversion do not solve the problem, it is important to check if the child has a deficiency in trace elements. It is reported that one or two year old children who suck their fingers, bite things randomly, and grind their teeth are likely to have zinc deficiency, and some may also have iron deficiency, copper deficiency, and calcium deficiency.
The above is the editor's introduction to the "tips for quitting children eating and sleeping with their hands". I believe everyone has understood after reading it. Children have a lot of bacteria on their hands, and if they put their hands into their mouths without cleaning them thoroughly, it can affect their physical health. How to change this habit is a concern for parents. Mothers need to enrich children's lives, play with them more often, and shift their attention.