Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Nervous habits


I love this girl. I love (almost) everything about her. She is adorable and fun to be around and hilarious. But the last few weeks, she has developed a few nervous habits. Not a big deal, I thought, until yesterday. Her "habits" (clearing her throat) increased to once every five seconds at the longest interval. She was grunting ALL DAY LONG.
I was at a loss. I tried scolding. I tried distracting. I tried telling her to twiddle her fingers when she felt like clearing her throat. I tried giving her drinks. Nothing worked. I kept picturing her around other kids and having them make fun of her for being weird. I prayed last night that she would stop.

So today, the throat-clearing grunt is significantly better. But now she's doing this weird whisper of sounds thing. Like "rk-tch-ka" over and over. While I'm reading to her, while she plays with dolls, while she eats...I don't know what to do. It is a little less annoying than the throat thing, but still. Not very socially acceptable.

I am positive she got this from my side of the family - we Andersens are known for our strange nervous habits. So I feel partly responsible, at least genetically. But now, I'm not quite sure what to do. What would be the best way to get her to stop this?? HELP!

5 comments:

Samye said...

Both my older kids have done weird things like that too, I spoke with my pediatrician and he said to just ignore it. If you draw attention to it- then they will just keep doing it more and more. Good luck!!

Elise said...

Don't have any advice for ya, but I am loving those piggy tails!

Colleen Andersen said...

What darling pictures! It's so fun seeing you girls together. I'm sure Eva will stop sooner than later. That's probably how she's dealing with the stress of moving, baby, etc. Just relax. I love you.

Lindsay said...

Okay first of all NEITHER of those things are worse than Tyler's FLAPPING!! Which is extremely obvious and extremely autistic and extremely socially unacceptable! haha. But if you figure out a solution, let me know. I'm totally at a loss too.

Chels said...

I would say ignore it. It is part of growing up.