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Got Kids with Bad Habits? 7 Foolproof Solutions {Episode 171}
748 Plays3 years ago
How come kids are so good at bad habits? But seriously, in this Episode, Bonnie & Audrey (with a combined 19 bad habit infested children between their two families) take on this difficult topic! They discuss what not to do, the why behind the habits, and 7 simple yet foolproof solutions for getting through bad habits. Oh, and they share the secret to how these bad habits might just magically disappear all by temselves too!
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 88 The Importance of Outdoor Time
The Nailbiter poem by Shel Silverstein
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to this episode and we are excited to let you know today's episode is brought to you by Let's Make Art. We've dropped a link to them in the show notes, but we just had to tell you more about this awesome company. You guys know how much we love teaching our kids and art is a huge part of that, although sometimes it can seem really overwhelming to teach your kids art if you're not an artist yourself. So that's where Let's Make Art comes in. They have a ton of kid-friendly supplies, subscription boxes, tutorials, you name it.
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Speaker
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00:00:46
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And what I love about it is that they have boxes and tutorials curated by artists themselves. So you get to take a course with an artist online and get all the supplies you need delivered right there instead of going to some art store that you're unfamiliar with and trying to bumble around and get the right stuff.
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I tell you what, I'm probably gonna be elbowing my kids out of the way to be able to do Let's Make Art. Don't forget to check the link in the show notes so you get 20% off with our custom link and every order over $49 gets free shipping. Let's Make Art Simple together. Check out Let's Make Art today by going to our special link zen.ai forward slash outnumbered the pod. Yep, you can get 20% if you use the link zen.ai forward slash outnumbered the pod.
Meet Audrey and Bonnie
00:01:37
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
00:02:03
Speaker
Hi, everybody. We are especially excited today because we get to talk to you about something really gross. Bad habits. I mean, you know. Put the intro there.
00:02:15
Speaker
No, if you want really gross, go join our Patreon. That's where we just share all the ins and outs, all the behind the scenes of motherhood. No, we did go quite unfiltered this month for our Patreon friends. But if you're a mom, you get it. You get it.
Understanding Bad Habits
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, some bad habits are really gross. So we're going to dive into this. Talk about how to help our kids, how to be good examples, all the things. But first, we'll start with a little humor segment. You guys, this doesn't really have anything to do with habits.
00:02:40
Speaker
My little two almost three year old is just so funny these days. He just, you know, out of the mouth of babes, right? Says things, cracks me up. So last night my 12 year old had a friend over and this friend's mom came to pick her up and the friend's mom has not had babies for a long time. So she was just gushing over my babies and oh my goodness, who wants to come stay with me? And oh my goodness, you're so cute. Can I steal you? And as she was leaving, Dean, my two year old chased her out and she turned around and goes, do you want to come to my house? We have puppies and cotton candy.
00:03:08
Speaker
And naturally he says, yeah, I want to go. She goes, OK, go ask your mom. So he runs inside with mom. I go with them. I go with them their house. And I said, you want to go with Juliet's friend to her house? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And puppies. And he just goes on and on and on. And I was like, well, I don't know. Anyway, in his mind, he got a yes answer. He about faces and then he
00:03:32
Speaker
drags his foot back like he's like he's about to like, charge a bowl or something. Like, like he's getting ready to sprint away. He slicks this foot back and then takes off. And I hear him yell as he runs out the door. My mom, I talked to my mom. She said yes. My mom said okay. I'm like, Oh, I don't know how I got that answer. But it was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. It was the answer you wanted. Yeah, I got it. I asked and she said something and I'm taking it for a yes. So cute.
00:04:03
Speaker
That's adorable. Yes. My boy of the same age as your boy, he is in the same saying cute things phase. And I'm writing down so many of them because I don't remember him feeling like, you know, he's the last one. And I'm getting old and my memory is bad. So I would remember.
Why Kids Have Habits
00:04:24
Speaker
Okay, so what do we mean by bad habits? Just kind of define it at the outset. This is stuff mostly we're talking about physical bad habits that a kid does for a reason that isn't a good reason.
00:04:39
Speaker
So like nail biting, thumb sucking, nose picking. And we might cross a little bit into some bad manner things, but mostly that's what we mean by bad habits. Kind of the physical things that they do that we don't want them doing by the time they're an adult or even much sooner. So that's just to define it at the outset. That is what we're talking about when we were talking about bad habits that kids pick up and we're trying to help them with.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, and of course they'll have bad habits that are more like, more like habitual behaviors like leaving socks on the floor, but we're kind of talking about like compulsive things and they tend to be like damaging to your body or to possession. So that's the kind of thing we're focusing on. Although if there's enough desire, you guys should let us know, email us or let us know in the, in a review and we can do something a little bit deeper, like maybe bad habits, like emotional type bad habits, you know, fighting and anyway. So, but this is what we're talking about today.
00:05:35
Speaker
So number one, the first step we're going to say is, and probably goes for every single thing you want to help your kid overcome, and that is to not shame or condemn them, right? Kind of the first thing we want to do is, ew, that's so gross. Why are you picking your nose? Stop it, you know? But very often it can be something that they're not even really aware of. They just kind of get in this habit of doing it. And so shaming them first makes them want to shut down, and then it makes them want to hide it, and basically the opposite of what you want to do in order to help them overcome it.
00:06:04
Speaker
So I try to stay really curious about it and be really interested in the behind the scenes of this habit. Like, huh, I've noticed that she starts the nose picking this time in the afternoon when she's getting a little bit bored, you know, just kind of be really curious about what's happening underneath. Right. Exactly. We're going to dig into the into the why, why they're doing it here in a minute.
00:06:24
Speaker
other things what not to do, guys, this is really hard. I think we're including this because it's so natural as a mom, like they pick their nose and they're headed for their mouth and you're like, no, no, no, please stop. Like you just oh, but so hard not to overreact because some kids are going to be like cry if you overreact and some kids are going to be like, hey, I got a response out of mom if you overreact.
00:06:48
Speaker
So what we're saying first is like just control yourself. And another thing that maybe you might be tempted to do, but you definitely shouldn't, is publicly embarrass them. That's just not going to go well. It's not going to have a good outcome.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, and the public embarrassment, I mean, again, very often we're not meaning to do this, but we call them out in front of a friend or in front of somebody else and it causes a lot of stress for them. But if we do intentionally or unintentionally publicly embarrass them, very often we are breaking our child's trust and they know that they can't be open about this problem with us because they think that we're gonna go out and tell somebody about it. So that's something to keep in mind.
00:07:27
Speaker
Okay, so a few other thoughts on this are, chances are the child already feels some embarrassment, especially if they're not too. You know, if they're like five or six or seven or a sibling has noticed or somebody else has noticed, chances are that good they already feel like, oh, kind of shameful about it. And we don't really need to add to that. I love, and we'll talk more about this later, but I love to share my own experience with habits, right? If you see them getting a little bit embarrassed or feeling ashamed, you can just say, hey, you know what? I did something like that when I was a kid too. I didn't even know why. We'll talk about it. We'll work on it together.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a really, really good point. Be where you want to be the person that they can come to. Like you're the safe person for them. We talked that a lot in our episode on
00:08:09
Speaker
I think it was the episode on temper tantrums, kids having temper tantrums. Okay, so yeah, you mentioned their age. That matters so much. Like you can't even hardly consider a habit with the youngest kids because they might consider what we think a bad habit, let's say biting their fingernails. They might consider that useful. They can't manipulate a fingernail clipper. Biting them off fixes the problem, right? Or, you know, even with the littlest kids exploratory, huh, my finger fits in this hole in my nose, you know, that kind of thing.
00:08:38
Speaker
We're not going to see the first time we see them picking their nose or sucking their thumb, putting their thumb in their mouth. Consider that they've got this bad habit for life. But just keep in mind that the youngest kids, there might be just a rational purpose behind it.
00:08:55
Speaker
Right, right. They're just exploring, being kids. The other thing about age is very often those younger kids will outgrow it without any intervention on our part. And sometimes it can actually develop into this compulsive habit, but it just kind of drops off after a while. The solutions we're going to give today can be used for those kids where it's been a problem for a while and they want to stop. You want them to stop. Everyone's united together on one front. Let's work on this together. And you've been seeing it for quite some time.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you know, the thing here is that when their youngest kids are doing this, you're not even really going to be able to help them work through a solution because we've got seven solutions that we've used and we're going to talk through here in a little bit and share with you guys that you can use if you've got a kid using a bad habit. But
00:09:42
Speaker
It's not going to work with the little kids because they don't even have concepts or you can't reason with them or any of these things that we're going to use with older kids. So just like just focus on not doing the things that we talked about and it very well is just going to go away by itself.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so number one, what not to do. Number two, age matters. Number three, try to discover the why behind the habit.
The Emotional and Health Connection
00:10:07
Speaker
And this could be something very clear cut. It could be something a little bit hidden, but we talked about this a little bit ago. Try to discern if there's like a physiological trigger, an external trigger, right? Maybe they're bored. Every time they watch
00:10:20
Speaker
a show. They pick their nose. Or every time mom leaves, they suck their thumb. So maybe it's comfort. Maybe it's sadness. Maybe it's overwhelm. Very often it's an emotion. Very often these bad habits are triggered by an emotion that we might consider a negative emotion and they're looking for some out. But sometimes that's not even the case. Sometimes it's just a matter of the right time and place. And that's when the habit pops up.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, like they are exploring ways to deal with emotions at younger ages. So if I feel sad because I'm on the left and I suck my thumb, that makes me feel better. So that is a solution. When you're five or three, yes. When you're 25 or 23, maybe no. Even 10, probably not 10. Let's gradually move on here.
00:11:10
Speaker
OK, so another why beyond the habit that you might not be thinking about is maybe there's a health issue going on. For example, a child picking their nose and eating it, they are, this is super gross, guys, but they are recycling protein. Right? So I have to, you know, this is not in the solution section here, but I had a habitual nose picker and I started giving that kid, making sure they had a good, hearty protein meal.
00:11:39
Speaker
a couple times a week, three, four times a week, you know, a steak or a hamburger or something. And boom, that habit went away and I was like, ew, gross. But OK, that fixed that. So you might you might like look into health issues, too.
Modeling and Solutions
00:11:53
Speaker
Same thing, you know, if they have here's another one, for example, that you see them biting like their nails or the skin around their nails a lot because they have a lot of hang nails. Well, that can be a sign, for example, of an iron deficiency that they've always got these or, you know, chipping nails. That's another sign of a, you know, another
00:12:09
Speaker
What's my word? Mineral deficiency. And so, you know, just just look and maybe maybe look deeper. Don't automatically head for the habit and try to squish that one. But see, is there a reason they've always got hangnails? You know, some something going on underneath. Yeah, absolutely. Those are so fascinating. OK, so number four, and this is a painful one, but try to be a good example yourself. Now, we fully realize that most parents are probably not struggling with picking their nose and eating it. I hope.
00:12:37
Speaker
Please, but guaranteed we all have some little nasty little habits that we are trying to overcome as well, right? And this can actually be a great way to connect with them. But, you know, things like what about something simple like talking with food in your mouth or interrupting people or something like that, right? That's a little bit less of a compulsive one. But if you're doing it, your child will not be able to learn how not to because they are constantly reinforced with your bad example.
00:13:03
Speaker
Oh, yes, this one can be so painful because like when you see something that you don't like about yourself coming out and your kid, you're like, you know, I'm going to take care of that in them. But really, the take care of that maybe needs to happen in ourselves first, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
So or maybe maybe it's not us, maybe it's somebody they love or respect and they've seen them doing the bad habit, even like an older sibling or an aunt or a grandparent or whatever. So these all set you up for really good conversations. You know, if it's about yourself, oh, my goodness, I notice that you talk with your food in your mouth. And when I watch you do this, I realize that I have been talking with food in my mouth. Let's try to work on this together or
00:13:43
Speaker
You know, you really love aunt so-and-so, but you've seen them doing this thing. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about why that might not be the best idea of a thing to do. Again, share your own experiences if you can connect with them that way, right? When I was little, I sucked my thumb too. You know what Grandma did to me? She suggested XYZ, right? Or sometimes, this is a personal example, sometimes I pick at my cuticles and it makes my fingers bleed.
00:14:08
Speaker
I don't know why I do that. Sometimes I've noticed when I'm stressed out or I've noticed if I paint my nails, sometimes I don't do it right. You can really connect with the child and make them realize that there's nothing to be ashamed about. Even grownups have these habits.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. Okay, now we're gonna dive into how we have helped our kids get over bad habits because with nine and 10 kids between us, you know that we've seen a bad habit or two. So we have seven things that we have used and we're gonna share these with you guys. So if you guys have something else, you can leave us a review, send us a, drop us a note, a line, email, whatever. But these are seven really effective ones that we've used. All right, first one.
00:14:50
Speaker
First way to help your kid. Well, get to know your kid. This is about the why. Once you discern the why, you can more easily assess how to help them. So are they really nervous? Is that why they're biting their fingernails? What is it with this kid? So we were talking about a little bit about the why, but it does change from kid to kid. So the number one
00:15:13
Speaker
thing that I would suggest or the first thing that I would suggest here is self-awareness. So, hey, did you know that whenever you're watching a show, you have your fingers in your mouth and your body, your fingernails, or did you know that I've often seen you, you know, fill in the blank? Maybe they just aren't even aware they're doing it. And then another part of this is that you can say, have you ever seen anybody else
00:15:38
Speaker
picking their nose and eating it or whatever happens to be the bad habit that you're working on. So kind of a self-awareness and a social awareness is a really good way. And sometimes, you know, just saying that to kids and they're like, oh, hey, I am the only one who, you know, bites my fingernails in this house. You know, maybe I'm maybe maybe that's not quite what I should be doing. Yeah, totally. And it keeps that
00:16:02
Speaker
line of communication open and that curiosity open, right? If it's asked with no shame or condemnation, just, hey, isn't that interesting? I wonder why you do that. Maybe you're just kind of bored. You're looking for something to do with your fingers. I wonder if there's something else we could do, right? Number two solution is to help them be empowered to overcome the habit, right? So very often when they acknowledge a habit so that there's the self-awareness, then they feel really helpless because it's something they're not consciously choosing to do. And that can be a really scary thing for a kid, like, oh, I said I wasn't going to suck my thumb and I just did. And, you know, right?
00:16:32
Speaker
So give them some power. Hey, you're totally within control. Like this is within your control to stop doing. And you might want to give them some reasons why, right? At first they might not even care. So you might want to say, hey, have you noticed that sometimes your thumb cracks open and bleeds? I think that's because of the sucking. Or have you noticed that you always have really low fingernail beds and it hurts sometimes? You could be so much happier or in less pain or stronger if you would stop this thing.
00:17:00
Speaker
And then for the older kids, they can also feel empowered to reach other goals. Because if you can stop doing a nasty little habit like that, you can do anything, right? Because it just involves small little incremental steps. So if it's someone who is maybe eight or nine or 10, a little bit older to understand that concept of a future goal, you can say, hey, let's work on this together. And then maybe we can work on a goal to make something fun, right? To do a little something here, get a little stronger with our exercise regimen or whatever they really want to learn how to do.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, I really love that one because it gives them the power. If they can do it and have that power from when they're little, they can take that as a tool into their whole life.
00:17:37
Speaker
Okay, the third suggestion we have is teach them better habits. So this is tied to self-awareness and there's some manners in here. So, you know, this might be one with, okay, let's say talking with food in their mouth. Okay, we, in this family at the table, we talk a lot with food in our mouth. So we're all gonna try to work on that and a better manner to have or a better habit to have is to wait until you're done eating or, you know,
00:18:05
Speaker
picking your nose. So a better habit is to blow your nose first thing when you get up in the morning, you know, that kind of thing. So just teach them good habits, better habits. When we wake up, we brush our teeth and we blow our nose and that helps us not be picking our nose through the day, you know. So teach, insert the good habits. Keep working on those moms. Yes, totally. Sometimes there's a very simple solution like nose pickers, just hand them a tissue. Here, you need to take care of it, take care of it with a tissue instead of your fingers. There's a place for it to go instead of in your mouth, right? Great.
00:18:34
Speaker
A fourth solution is you can help motivate them through a reward system. Now, this tends to be the first thing we jump to, like, oh, let's make a sticker chart, or let's have some sort of reward so that a week of no thumbs up and you get this thing. They can be helpful. I would just caution to beware of accidentally making the situation worse or even prolonging a bad habit. I've had that happen where my system was set up in such a way that it actually rewarded them to be working on it longer.
00:19:06
Speaker
I did. Kids are smart. They'll learn how to gain the system. We sit down with them and say, hey, I would love to help you beat this habit. And I know it kind of bothers you too. What can we work on together? Is there a way that we can make this a little bit more rewarding for you? Yeah, that's a good one.
00:19:23
Speaker
All right, the fifth way we have is relatability. We talked a little bit about, you know, telling them ourselves, but that might be kind of hard for them to relate to when mom was a kid. You know, that might kind of be a foreign concept. So how about reading a book about a kid who overcame the same habit?
00:19:38
Speaker
or that part about telling him a habit you overcame. I have a cute little whip method that we used with one of my kids who bit his fingernails. We found a poem by Shel Silverstein called The Nail Biter. And if you guys listen to the podcast for a while, you know that poetry is a huge part of our homeschooling. And so I had this child, when he was in the middle of this habit, trying to overcome it, memorize this poem, The Nail Biter.
00:20:03
Speaker
And it's such a cheeky poem. It's so cute that, we'll try to like it in the show notes here so you can go check it out, that it made him actually laugh at himself whenever he bit his nails. And it didn't take much longer after memorizing this poem that you overcame it. So just something that's relatable to them.
00:20:23
Speaker
That's a really fun poem. I love Shel Silverstein. I also love, when we're talking about bad habits, I love Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. So hilarious stories of kids with some nasty little habits and how she helps them overcome them. And generally they're very unrealistic solutions, but they can be just infuse enough humor into the situation to help your child be more aware and willing to work through it.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, humor is a great way to take it more toward away from the what not to do that our mom, you know, our mom tendency starts to, you know, slap away their hand when they're headed toward their mother. And humor helps us help them. Yeah, totally.
Practical Alternatives and Activities
00:21:00
Speaker
Okay, sixth solution would be to replace the habit with something better, right? And this is kind of like when we were talking about teaching them better habits. But if you've noticed that the habit always pops up at a certain time and place, perhaps there's a way to replace it with something a little less harmful or a little more useful. So let's say every time they do their math, they chew on the end of their pencil, right? Or bite their fingernails or something. Maybe you could hand them a little squishy ball or a poppet or something so their fingers can stay busy while they're thinking and keeps their hands out of their mouth or nose or whatever.
00:21:30
Speaker
There are a million different, a million and one different solutions for this. You might have to get a little creative with some habits. But if you give yourself a minute to think, you can probably come up with some great ideas. Yeah, or ask them. I mean, like they're, you know, I've noticed you're always, we're talking about you've always chew on your pencil while you're doing math. So what do you think we could do instead during math and give them something that put their brain on?
00:21:56
Speaker
working on it too. All right, the last suggestion we have is physical activity. I mean, you might think how on earth is this related to them picking their nose and eating it? But this physical activity will prevent or fix a lot of bad habits. It takes their mind off the habit. It keeps them active. It just gets them out and moving. In fact, Bonnie and I love to talk about outdoor time and physical activity so much that we have a whole episode on that. You can go check that one out too.
00:22:25
Speaker
But this is just kind of like a secret tool that you didn't know could be applied to bad habits that a kid might have is just physical activity. Get them out there, get them moving, get them tired and see what happens.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yes, in addition to this, I would add limit screen time. So I've noticed that if my kids, especially the fidgety hand habits that a lot of the ones that we've talked about today happen when kids are zoning out, right? And there's really not a lot of times in their life that this happens naturally, but it does happen in front of screens, right? Entertainment screens, I mean, you know, TV or games or whatever. That's when they tend to just kind of go to this
00:23:08
Speaker
zone out, zone out place and then their fingers go in their nose or they start doing things or whatever. Just say, oh, okay, look, it's nose picking time. Time to turn off the TV, go ride your bike. So outside is a great solution.
When to Seek Help
00:23:25
Speaker
Okay, a few final thoughts. We're kind of tongue in cheek with this episode because we can laugh at a lot of these bad habits that we struggled with and our kids struggle with. But in reality, our kids are really complex little creatures, right? They have this whole bundle of thoughts and needs and emotions and stressors and sometimes like real deep struggles and traumas. And we might not have the answer for all these things. In fact, you might get to a point with a bad habit where we think this is causing a lot of
00:23:51
Speaker
harmed my child, and I don't have a solution. It might be time to go seek a professional's help. But by and large, if we stay open with them, loving with them, and no shame or punishment for these little things, then the kids will find a way to overcome them.
00:24:07
Speaker
I would also say just don't assume that you know the reasoning behind the bad habit. Like we're saying, sometimes you can discover it while you're watching. Oh, it looks like they're just being fidgety or need some comfort or something. But sometimes you can't, right? And also beware of catastrophizing it, right? Just because your kid has a bad habit doesn't mean they're going to grow up to be this filthy, disgusting human that can.
00:24:30
Speaker
Sometimes I think that like, oh, he's just so gross because he does this thing. No, it's just a little habit that a kid does. If you are working on this habit for a while and it begins to strain the relationship, that's a good time to just drop it and say, okay, we're going to give it six months and see where we are then. It's very possible the kid will just drop it. If not, then you can go on to the next solution.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of straining the relationship, sometimes you might notice that the other siblings in the family have picked up on what you're trying to work on with this kid and then they start trying to work on that with that kid too. And this kid is like every waking moment, somebody's telling him not to bite his fingernails and that, you know, just keep in mind that the solution can't be worse than the problem. Yes. Agreed. Yeah.
00:25:16
Speaker
Well, my final thoughts here are just be intentional so much on this podcast. And what we have talked to you about is just be intentional. Think about it. Think deeper about it. Make intentional choices about how you're going to handle it. And focus on yourself. We talk about that so much. I'm sorry, but we just do.
00:25:37
Speaker
Like work on yourself, help your kids. We all, I think the problem here with bad habits is that we think that this is gonna be a bad reflection on us, right? Like what our little kid is doing. If we take a 12 year old out in public and they suck their thumb, we're forever going to be a lesser human in the minds of other people around us, right? But guys, let's ease up on ourselves.
00:26:04
Speaker
And then there are poor children. I know, I know, I know. We're trying and they're trying and I loved what you said about all the complexities that kids are struggling with and learning. Like it might be a little coping mechanism to suck their thumb or bite their fingernails for something for a while. And after a while, they'll have more mature, better developed tools and they'll let that little one go. But yeah, so my basic thought here is just be intentional about how
00:26:28
Speaker
how you respond to something that you see as a bad habit or an undesirable trait in one of your kids.
Final Encouragement
00:26:36
Speaker
We've probably seen them all and we're rooting for you. We've worked with some, some they've outgrown, some, I don't know, maybe they still do and just hide it from us. I don't know. But we just want to encourage you to keep trying. It's worth it.
00:26:54
Speaker
Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.