Please help. My son can't stop picking his fingers.

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Hello,

I joined this forum ages ago, but haven't posted in quite some time. I am the proud mom to an 11 year old son dx with Aspergers, ADHD, General Anxiety, and strong OCD tendencies.

He is currently on medication for violent and obtrusive OCD thoughts, which were really affecting his anxiety levels. The medication he is on has definitely helped. The issue I am dealing with now, is his skin picking. He picks and picks at his fingers. He will pick off all of his cuticles and peel off layers of his nails. Tonight I just noticed the area around his thumb cuticle is all swollen. Also, the areas of skin on top of a few of his fingers have been picked raw, and his thumb nail is so thin it's soft.

We have tried gloves, but he does not want to wear them at school and stick out. I have also tried putting band-aids on his fingers, but he takes them off.

Do any of you have any experience with this? I'm not sure what else to do.

Thanks,

Kat

WOW! My little sister picks at her skin too!! ! I highly suspect her of being on the Spectrum. Picking mosquito bites unit they bleed!! ! and just picking her skin overall. (Not hangnail stuff but just picking it!)

I really don't have any suggestions other than if he can find some other thing to preoccupy his hands like a squeeze ball or rubix cube or something (and a talk with the school of course). But he's 11 also so he's probably going to have to want to do it, too.

I used to chew at the corners of my fingertips, then pick at the skin. I never got quite as bad as your son, but even now, if I have a bit of skin that's hard or what have you, I'll start peeling it back, and before I know it, I'll have a thin line of blood along the nail. Sometimes it gets puffy because it gets slightly infected. I just can't seem to stop myself from doing it if there's a bit of skin that's irritating me.

From my own experience, two things might help. First, if he's doing it as much as you describe, I doubt that it is just a loose or hard bit that's irritating him. In part, it is now a habit. The sooner you can get him off that, the better. But, I'm guessing he picked up this habit because of stress. I had a horrible teacher in the second grade, she made my live a living hell, and it was that year I went from nibbling my nails a bit to gnawing off the skin at the corners of my fingertips - and chewing at the sleeves of my shirts, in my case.

I don't know what's causing him the stress, but the first thing is to get him calmed down. Way down. It will take months at least. Let him do stuff he likes, as long as it isn't harmful. Figure out if it is a school issue, and if it is, get the buzzards off his back. Get the stress down. Until you do that, he's not going to stop. Even then, trying too hard to get him to stop will just pile on more stress, and that is not what you want. If the problem is bad enough, and intractable enough (my 2nd grade teacher was also the principal, had tenure - and the best the superintendent could do was advise my mother how many afternoons I could be released early without - quite - falling foul of state law) you've got your work cut out for you. I'm afraid my personal suggestions in a case like that are neither very practical nor at all legal...

When he's not so stressed, give him things he finds interesting he can fiddle with. Things that will keep his hands busy doing other things. I don't know him well enough to suggest what would work. I'd take pens apart and put them together, and click them endlessly, in and out. Or he could try "worry stones"; smooth stones he could slide through his fingers. Or little gadgets of some sort; I did a bit of that, too. The idea is to keep him busy, too busy to be picking at himself, too absorbed to think about it. That way, you avoid the action, but he doesn't have to deal with the pressure.

If you get that far, you've got him away from the worst of it. He'll still be doing it a bit, but not as badly. Now, you need to get him used to carrying around nail clippers, and using those to cut off any bits of skin that annoy him. Since he's been picking at himself this badly, he will probably have hard, annoying little bits that will form here and there for the rest of his life. I speak from experience. If he gets used to clipping those off - but don't start him until he's calmed down enough he won't go overboard with that - then he shouldn't hurt himself too badly or too often.

Does he actually have a problem with it? It doesn't sound like that severe of an issue as long as you check and prevent infections, etc. If this is his stim of choice the only option you have is to try to replace it with another, such as an object to fidget with.

When I was a kid I picked all the skin off my lips, would rip my nails off and even ripped off moles from my skin. It never bothered me but only seemed to bother others.

I don't think stimming can ever be "outgrown" but I've certainly grown up and changed and so have my stims.

my 5yo does that too, to a lesser extent. he also peels his lips. most of the picking he does on his fingers is around the cuticles and then he freaks right out screaming when it bleeds and demands immediate first aid. he just started licking his lips too, over and over and over. i don't have any advise to share, just wanted to share that mine does the same thing.

I hate to rain on everyone's parade here with the "he'll grow out of it" thoughts, but my husband is 43 and he hasn't. He cuts all his nails with clippers till they bleed. If he doesn't have clippers, he picks even worse. He is very hairy and he picks at his skin, any little imperfection, real or imagined, until it bleeds. I tried and tried to get him to stop when we got married 15 months ago, to no avail. Supposedly there has been some success with taking large amounts of inositol, up to 18 grams, but it didn't seem to help him.
And, get this...he's diabetic...and I'm a nurse who has seen many many lopped off appendages due to diabetic infections. Needless to say, it grieves me greatly, but I have had to learn to try and ignore it because I know he would stop if he could. He has made many other positive changes since we married and this one thing is just not one of them.

missykrissy--
My stepson licks his lips incessantly at times now that the winter air is much drier. If I can get him to drink lots of water during the day, he stops. I think the lip-licking thing is an effort to make chapping feel better which can sometimes be alleviated by hydrating with water.

my son is 18 yr old and for 5 years he peeled his nails on his fingers down to the nub and often made them bleed. he also did it with his toenails. he has ripped out tags from shirts for as long as i can remember. the toenail thing even made us have to go to the podiatrist cuz he caused infections and ingrown nails that had to be cut. he dreaded going each time cuz it was painful (for him and me) but could not stop doing it. now, he still peels and bites his nails, but not quite as horribly as he once did (hope i didn't speak too soon...) his medication has calmed his nerves a bit...and he also has stimming toys to play with when he is anxious that he uses. i still find broken pens, pencils, my hair clips( if i don't hide them and he has a bout of anxiety), etc. there is no easy answer...but to try and find a med. that helps calm him down a bit, and to find other items for him to fiddle with. hope it helps.

My daughter also does this, bites the skin around her nails continiually, and the nails as well. For a while putting on that stuff for nail biters worked; the nail varnich type stuff that tastes horrible, but that was when she was co-operative with wanting to stop biting her nails. I agree with Wanderer that it's about stress, and wish I could help. My daughter gets very cross if I say to her to get her fingers out of her mouth.

I am a chewer and a picker! My Dad used to call me Mouse because I chewed on everything. I have been chewing and picking at my fingers since before I can remember. Sometimes its due to anxiety and sometimes excitement....sometimes I do it out of boredom. My, now 18 year old, Aspie had a serious picking problem when she was about 14. She had holes all over her arms and legs, some quite deep. We put her on a low dose of celexa and gave her clay and squeezing stress balls and it helped. She was also motivated to stop because she was getting upset by the scaring. She still picks but not to that extreme. The best thing you can do if he is causing serious damage is to try to redirect. Talk to him before hand and explain it might help if he tried using clay or play doh to pick at sometimes to keep his fingers from getting too sore. Dont tell him that he has to stop picking just tell him that sometimes it would be better if he found something else to pick. That way he knows that you understand and you are not inadvertently putting more stress on him by trying to get him to stop. If the clay or play doh does not work try other things like letting him play with a tangle or other fiddle (there are great ones at officeplayground.com).