This has been tearing me up. Seriously tearing me up. Little A, my cute adorable Little A, has been pulling her hair out for the past two years. I have a photo of her at one - when her hair finally grew long enough that she could grasp it - twirling her hair. Since then it's been a constant up and down of hair coming in, her pulling it out, then stopping the pulling just long enough for some hair to come back in and my hopes to get up that the cycle has been broken. She's never plucked her head bald....but that's why she has the little pixie 'do...from pulling. We tried ignoring the behavior. We tried subbing for other stimulus. We tried reminding her. Nothing has worked. And now she told me that the reason why she pulls her hair is because she's hungry. Which is scary. That means she could be eating it...which could cause a blockage in her digestive tract and would mean surgery. So, we've got to stop this habit. But it's killing me. She does it in conjunction with thumbsucking; something that I am totally okay with as a self-soothing/coping mechanism. But given that they're linked behaviors, both have got to go. Our major plan of attack is on the nightime pulling/sucking. I've sewn socks onto the arms of her PJs. We're on night two of the sock experiment. Last night she was up several times - two of which involved my (or W) going in there and laying in her bed to soothe her back to sleep. Tonight she had a really rough time falling asleep, but I think she finally went down an hour ago (an hour after we put her to bed). It kills me that she can't suck her thumb. Or soothe herself. I know it's really bothering her. But I don't know what else to do. She can't eat her hair. Ugh. Am I a bad parent? Am I totally messing her up for life? Anyone else out there dealt with this? Any other ideas that I'm not thinking of? I really, really don't want my kid to be unable to self-soothe, but I also don't want her doing something that's harmful to her health.
This has been tearing me up. Seriously tearing me up. Little A, my cute adorable Little A, has been pulling her hair out for the past two years. I have a photo of her at one - when her hair finally grew long enough that she could grasp it - twirling her hair. Since then it's been a constant up and down of hair coming in, her pulling it out, then stopping the pulling just long enough for some hair to come back in and my hopes to get up that the cycle has been broken. She's never plucked her head bald....but that's why she has the little pixie 'do...from pulling. We tried ignoring the behavior. We tried subbing for other stimulus. We tried reminding her. Nothing has worked. And now she told me that the reason why she pulls her hair is because she's hungry. Which is scary. That means she could be eating it...which could cause a blockage in her digestive tract and would mean surgery. So, we've got to stop this habit. But it's killing me. She does it in conjunction with thumbsucking; something that I am totally okay with as a self-soothing/coping mechanism. But given that they're linked behaviors, both have got to go. Our major plan of attack is on the nightime pulling/sucking. I've sewn socks onto the arms of her PJs. We're on night two of the sock experiment. Last night she was up several times - two of which involved my (or W) going in there and laying in her bed to soothe her back to sleep. Tonight she had a really rough time falling asleep, but I think she finally went down an hour ago (an hour after we put her to bed). It kills me that she can't suck her thumb. Or soothe herself. I know it's really bothering her. But I don't know what else to do. She can't eat her hair. Ugh. Am I a bad parent? Am I totally messing her up for life? Anyone else out there dealt with this? Any other ideas that I'm not thinking of? I really, really don't want my kid to be unable to self-soothe, but I also don't want her doing something that's harmful to her health.