Breaking pencils

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My daughter is a chewer & a picker too, she is 10. Her clothing must be plain, free from buttons, lace, bling, etc. She will pick or chew it off. She picks at the tread on the bottom of her shoes , gum under tables, most anything.

We have pencil problems too. She chews the erasers of & then the metal. I have gotten to where I snap the eraser part off myself & sharpen both ends for fear she is injesting the erasers & metal, but she still does it at school.

Last year they had community pencils. There was a big box, you picked one up in the morning & dropped it back off a the end of the day & they were sharpened by teachers assisitant. A few months into school the teacher called me in & said she thought Molly might be the reason 200 pencils no longer had erasers and many were missing the metal.

In my son's case, he doesn't have an IEP, and the teacher expects him to act like everyone else in the class. I find that amusing - because she can expect whatever she'd like - but that's not what she's going to get.

I haven't had trouble with my son actually ingesting the erasers or metal - but what you're describing is exactly what he does as well. It's somewhat comforting to know it's not just my son who has something against a perfect pencil.

We had a Dr. suggest buying her a necklece w/ some sort of rubber item on it she could chew. We did not do it because it seemed like transfering the chewing from 1 item to another was just giving her permission to chew. Not sure if that was/is the right choice.

I guess it depends on your daughter and how important chewing is for her as a stim / self-calming mechanism. If you deny one, she'll have to find another. Has she found something more acceptable to you, a different stim? Remember that she will need SOMETHING, or else she can't cope, and you'll see more meltdowns, more inability to do homework, etc.

My son does his best homework with a carrot in his mouth. Seriously, lol. Sit him on a chair, put the worksheet in front of him, and hand him a carrot. The chewing keeps him from thinking about how much he hates homework.

Personally, I think that by denying the stimming behavior - you're probably making matters worse. They HAVE to have some way of getting the frustration, getting the anxiety out...and I agree that if you don't give them permission to chew something - they'll just chew on things that are not allowed at all. It's a comfort to them.

If I could send stuff to school for my son to chew while he was doing schoolwork....I would! Instead, he ruins pencils.