What to Do When Bad Habits Take Hold: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Nail Biting and More (What to Do Guides for Kids)

My daughter had a real hard time adjusting to public school last year. So our therapist suggested one of the other books in this series about worry. I bought three in the series. Fun part is all of my nieces have read them and my daughter thinks it is fun to tackle her problems now that it has just be reduced to using lessons and logic. We have really used them often and will continue, great life skills here, simplified!

I have bought a few of these books by Dawn Huebner and I love them. They are really great at helping me as a parent help my kids work thru whatever we need to deal with right now. They are written in such a way that you can go thru the books together chapter-by-chapter and talk about things at each step. In this book, the focus starts with why we have bad habits and goes on to strategies on how to help your child get over them. Very helpful and highly recommended

Best set of books to give younger children applicable coping skills. The books have short easy to read chapters. The tips on dealing with different issues are age appropriate and easy to learn. I would say this set of books is best suited for 2nd-6th graders based on the reading level. Although the skills could be used by any age. I purchased a couple different titles. I wouldn't mind owning the entire series, just to keep as reference books.

omg i love your book! you are genius. i am so enjoying reading this with my 6 year old daughter and she is having fun writing in it. i am really hopeful all this stuff works and will even read to my 10 and 13 year old sons! and maybe my husband who bites his nails!! GREAT GREAT BOOK congratulations!! i will buy it for friends kids in future.. very very helpful and easy to understand!! thank you so much!

This is the second guide by Dr. Huebner that our family has used. She offers some great strategies (fiddle, let your feelings out, block, etc.) with specific steps. Great illustrations and space for your child to draw or write ideas. (The hard part with any bad habit is the follow through/sticking to the plan and rewards!). I recommend these books to my elementary aged students as well.

I sent this to my daughter who has a strong willed, wonderful-but -difficult , child . It was well thought out , and offers a coping mechanism , a realistic plan for alternative behavior and thinking , . . One can only hope

Very pleased with the product- cannot wait to use with my kiddos. Very pleased with the seller- highly recommend.

My 8 year old daughter has trichotillomania and this book helped her to realize there's nothing "wrong " with her it's just a bad habit she's developed to help her cope with anxiety. This book gives tools to use. I would absolutely recommend this book.

I bought this book in despair at my 9-year-old daughter's severe nail-biting habit. It details a very simple, non-judgemental step-by-step approach to getting rid of 'bad' habits/tics, and the method can be applied to most 'bad' habits (e.g. hair-pulling, unnecessary scratching, compulsive nose-picking, nail-biting, scab-picking, etc.). You start by reading a chapter a day together to get used to the method; once you feel familiar with it, the actual cure takes exactly 21 days. Before we started, my daughter had no nails to speak of, and her fingertips were literally bloody from constant chewing. (The book makes it clear that such 'bad' habits are _not_ necessarily symptoms of a greater problem, but just a pattern that some children, especially children with a lot of energy, can fall into). My daughter found the method fun and easy to follow, and before the 21 days were over, her fingernails had grown so long they actually needed to be trimmed, which I consider a miracle. The 21 days are now over, her fingertips are completely healed and her nails require trimming as normal. She has also gained confidence in her ability to overcome obstacles. I cannot recommend this book enough (I am sure it would work on adults as well). One tiny comment I would add is that the method need not be followed rigidly -- the book gives principles and examples but encourages parents and children to find their own ways to put it all into practice. I found some of the tips silly to say the least (e.g. chewing beef jerky whenever you have the urge to bite your nails) but it was easy and effective to substitute sugar-free chewing gum for this particular tip -- so basically you will need to follow your own initiative, but, like I said, I cannot recommend the book enough.

My 4 year old had been biting his nails for over 6 months I think. I read through the first few chapters and did exercises with him. First it helped me understand and take a different approach of telling him it's ok to fidget and to work at identifying the places, what he was feeling and replacing his habit. At 4 years old I also summarized some of the verbiage. Before we got farther in the book by day 3 he just stopped. Did not even pick up a new habit. Said he realized it was bad, mentioned his teacher saying too (which is not new). So I'm not sure if it was entirely the book, but the timing made sense and for the price, get it and hope it works for you.

Very effective at identifying the basis of habits and how to address the underlying issues in the habit. Finger sucking stopped in 21 days, after all else had failed.

I am an adult but after having read other books by the same author and being a nail bitter, I thought I would give it a try. Well, I have grown my fingernails now. It was surprisingly simple. A step by step, well laid out plan (just like her other books) of how to break a bad habit. Thank you Dawn Huebner for all of your help!

This book can help a parents more about his child .