*Our 5 year old girl is displaying very nervous habits, such as thumb *sucking, hair twirling etc. She has done the thumb-hair twirling since *birth, subsbreastuting her own hair for her mothers once her mother got *tired of the knots. * *We have been patiently just waiting without trying to draw to much *attention to them and hoping they will go away, but lately our concern *is growing. We gently remind her that kids in kindergarten dont suck *their thumbs (she goes in sept) but she will start doing other things *like licking the back of her hands and other *quirky habits if she is not sucking her thumb-twirling her hair. She is *very bright like her 7yr old sister, but they are polar opposites as far *as personality goes. She is very shy almost to the point of being *introverted, but once out of her shell will chatter the spots off a *leopard, just like her older sister.
My son will be five in September. He is *very* bright, and historically *very* shy. He has always had either "nervous habits" or "tics," depending on whose opinion you accept. The incidence increased dramatically about the time of his fourth birthday, IIRC. We did take him to see a child psychologist, who said he was very anxious, and who worked with him, teaching him how his brain worked, and what kind of anxieties might be reasonable and what might be unreasonable, and so forth. She also introduced the concept of having a small fidget toy to carry around - a marble, a piece of leather, a rock, something to have in his pocket to play with instead of what he would ordinarily do under stress (which was touch his ears and nose in a stereotypical sort of way). It helped very much. He only went to the psych for a few months, and then we had a new baby, and stopped going due to scheduling issues, but our son still uses the techniques he learned, and has really been doing great.
Unbouncing Tigger 2216I'd second the mini trampoline. In the early days of #2, #1 used to take it as her job to entertain...
-- Hillary Israeli, VMD Lafayette Hill-PA-USA-Earth "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read." --Groucho Marx
