Help - Need to Stop a Nose Picker/eater!

Go to a pet store and buy a bottle of apple bitter (it is safe). Spray some on her fingers a few times a day. After one taste, she will do everything in her power to keep her fingers out of her mouth! Just be sure to wash her hands before she eats. Maybe let her pick out a cool tissue box and she may actually use it. Encourage her to keep it in every room with her.

The main reason for picking is itching. If you use saline nose spray and keep it moist, then it won't get dry and itchy.

I noticed a lot of responses telling you that eating her boogers can not make her sick. First of all, the main germ source is not the booger, but the finger that she sucks it off of and the fingernails she digs with. If you sanitized her hands frequently and kept her fingernails short and clean, this would greatly decrease the risk. Also, a few people said that the only germ is boogers are the ones her body already has. NOT TRUE. The purpose of snot (along with the hairs in the nose) is to catch the germs you are breathing in before they get into your lungs. These dried boogers contain all the germ that were in the air and were kept OUT of her body.

'read an article a few years ago about a study in a part of China where nosepicking is just normal behavior and not taboo--study showed they actually built their immunities faster because they were essentially immunizing themselves (with dead germs, just like a vaccine) if they were getting any effect at all.

For what that's worth : P.

(Still gross ewwwww ... we have it in our family too, but not to any extreme amount)

I worried wayyy early that my child would do that, so I have always told her it's "Nose Poop" and she wouldn't dream of playing with "Poop" so she never started that habit. For me, it worked to reason with her that way...Good luck!!

I say NAY to the hot sauce--what if the sauced finger rubs an eye?

First, eating her buggers is NOT making her sick. Remember the buggers are coming out of her body. What's already in her body is what is in the buggers.

Eating buggers is common. I remember doing it when I was a kid. My 9 yo granddaughter still does it. She has learned to do it for the most part in private. All of us have just made a face and said "gross" or something similar. I don't know of any way to teach a child to not do that because I think it's not worth spending a lot of time on it.

The reason they eat them, I think, is because they taste salty. My 6 yo grandson, who has stopped eating buggers, I think, or he's more clever about doing it in private. But.....he licks our skin. Again, salt.

He was at my house today and drank 1/2 cup pickle brine. I have to hide the salt shakers so that he won't lick them.

I think that my daughter stopped the eating of buggers by handing him a tissue every time she sees him picking his nose. He stayed overnight with me and woke me up to get him a tissue. :) My daughter just ignored my granddaughter at the beginning. Maybe if she'd been handed a tissue along with the "gross" she'd have stopped by now.

I outgrew it and so will today's kids. I look at it as just a stage.

You could try keeping her nose well lubricated. I catch myself picking at my nose when it's dry. I use a sterile mist that comes in a small spray bottle like medicated nose spray. I know Little Noses carries it but I get mine for much less at Costco. You can also get a generic brand for less than Little Nose's at a drug store FM or ----.

As I recall we also had my grandson blow his nose freqently, sort of like potty training. We just wiped it until he learned to blow. My granddaughter still has trouble blowing her nose but she has learned that picking your nose is done in privacy.

I don't know how old your daughter is but if she's in daycare with several babies/kids it's common to catch everyone's bugs. They pass them around. My granddaughter ended up in the ER a couple of times and hospitalized once before she was 3. But she has cold induced asthma. The sick kind of cold not the temperature kind.

I know it's hard to believe but it's good that kids catch all these bugs early. Their body builds up an immunity so that they are more likely to stay healthy once they're in school.

I've never heard of kids getting sick from eating buggers. It's probably not the healthiest thing in the world but i wouldn't worry about it.

as she gets older she will realize its socially unacceptable and will stop doing it.

There are certain things I just don't think parents should try to control. if she wants to eat her own buggers, who are you to stop her? But I would set up boundaries by saying, this is something you should do in PRIVATE, such as the bathroom, and while your in the bathroom, why don't you just put it on a kleenex?

I happen to know both my kids eat their buggers occasionally and they are EXTREMELY healthy. We don't wash our hands every two seconds, either. I believe in exposing to germs in order to build up resistance.

I agree that this is a very common habit among kids, and adults as well. And no it would not cause her to keep getting sick, its just gross.
First of all is she aware when she is doing it? Is the inside of her nose dry or a sore in it? If it is I believe there is something you can use to help put a little moisture back in her nose, ask her dr.
I know that my brother used to put hotsause on his sons fingers everytime they caught him doing it. So when he did it again it burned when he got the hotsauce finger in his nose. He became very aware of his habit and tried to stop, or at least do it in private.
The internet is also a good place for info on nose picking.

Ugh.

I'm not sure its making her sick - she already has all the germs she is getting out of her nose - but it is gross. My daughter just picks - doesn't eat.

It has worked somewhat to remind her to stop when we see her, and also to offer her a tissue. We're trying to train her to blow her nose every time she feels like picking, and we've made really slow progress.

I haven't tried this with my kids, but the idea just occurred to me. I personally don't like the feeling of stuff in my nose. I have a few kids who are the same way. They've managed to curb the eating, but not the picking. Maybe your daughter has the same issue. Perhaps you could convince her to carry a hankerchief or a tissue in her pocket so she has someplace to wipe her finger. Then she can still clean out her nose if she needs to, but you won't have the issue of it making her sick.

Also, I remember a teacher telling me the same thing about getting sick from eating boogers, but it didn't make any sense to me. I figured it just came out of my body, so why would putting it back in make me sick? She might need a better explanation.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that it is the nose picking/eating that is causing your daughter to be sick. There are so many childrent and adults that do this that I think there would be a lot more people sick if it did really lead to sickness. Here is a kind of interesting take on the habit (http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=271), but it does say that there can be some secondary issues that can arise from this if the nasal skin is broken and infection occurs. There seems to be a lot on the net when you google the issue :)
Good luck, I know it is frustrating and concerning since your daughter is sick, but you may want to look at some other things in her environment causing it.
Take Care-