Re titled - yucky behavior

Post Reply New Topic

My daughter is starting stick her finger up her nose. She is not picking her nose, just sticking her finger as far up as possible while she sucks her thumb. Sometimes now the finger in the nose is even replacing the thumb. If she does get any boogers on her finger she is disgusted and immediately wipes them off on either a table or a wall. For some reason, she does not like the "feel" of a kleenex rubbed over her finger.

Last edited by PenguinMom on 10 Jul 2010, 4:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just to clarify, since there seems to be a frequent confusion:

Sticking a finger up the nose is not an Autistic stim. Its FIDGITING.

Autistic stims are a response to anxiety and are engaged in to diffuse that anxiety - just like rocking in a rocking chair does - repetitive means repetitive (over and over and over and over constantly) - not chronic (several times a day for fairly long periods).

Hair twisting, ear tugging, nail biting, the peepee dance - even toe walking (unless constant) - behaviors, not stims.

Though I would think that behavior is somewhat alarming. It sounds as though it could inadvertently be self-injurious to the sinuses.

Thank you for the clarification.

Any ideas how to get her to stop sticking her finger up her nose?

I never thought of toe walking as a potential stim. My middle son does it nearly always. He can walk on the flat of his feet and will occasionally do it for a couple steps. I'd describe his toe walking as constant. So, it could be a stim? Interesting.

I wish I had an idea for you. Middle son does that and at the age of 11 still hasn't broken the habit. He also pulls on his left ear at the same time. He doesn't do it in front of strangers much anymore. He finds it very comforting. He knows that I'll make him remove his finger if I catch him so he'll hide what he's doing.

I guess it's better than the chewing my eldest does. At least he isn't making himself sick (eldest will put dirty things in his mouth and has given himself many gastro infections that way) or destroying things.

Thats interesting Willard, my son puts his finger up his nose (and then in his mouth, even if nothing there ! !!) sucks his fingers, bites his finger nails.....I thought these were stims, as he does them regularly.

But I guess that makes sense, as they are not particularly repetitive. So when he does this, it is not nessarly for any purpose, as I belive a stim is???? I was always afraid to redirect it, in case it was necessary for him.

That changes a few things for us now.......thanks for sharing that xx

It's probably a phase.

Could she be directed to wash her hands afterwards? As for the behavior itself, ignoring it and not making such a big deal out of it will cause her to grow out of it. When I started to rip my hair out from stress, my parents making a big deal out if it only made it worse. The best thing they did was to ignore my pulling out my hair and get to the root of the actual problem....my dad being an adult bully.

Stimming is a self stimulating behavior be it twisting, biting, spinning, chewing, rubbing, sucking ect. Anything to stimulate your senses thus helping to calm and or regulate. I disagree that your daughter sticking her fingers up her nose while sucking her thumb is not a stim....Its obviously self stimulating or she wouldnt do it.

Not so much a stim, but it can be a way of compensating for visual processing or vestibular difficulties. My son doesn't do this, but he has other sensory processing difficulties. I read a book last year some time about the use of prism lenses and the effect they can have in "normalising" visual processing. Toe walking was one of the things that prism lenses can help with.

Can't remember the book's title, but the auther was Melvin Kaplan. Here's an article by him. http://www.latitudes.org/articles/amb_lens.html