Question

Johnny is a 12 year old boy who frequently bites his finger nails. One day, after biting most of his nails down, he notices his right thumb begins throbbing in pain. He goes directly to the kitchen to tell his mother that his thumb is hurting. When he arrives, his mother notices that Johnny is holding his thumb very tightly and keeps applying and reapplying pressure to the injured nail bed. She asks him “If it hurts so badly, why do you keep putting pressure on it?”

Answer 1

Nail biting may be a sign of tension, stress or a form of habit in children.But if not observed by parents and helping their child to come out of the habit can lead to infection. Here Johnny has paronchia ,infection of the skin around the nail or nail beds due to biting habit.This lead to exposure of skin to microorganisms and infected.As a result of this it causes throbbing pain,swelling, tender,redness in the thumb.When the child applies pressure the pain is controlled but after sometime it starts paining again which makes the child to remove pressure.Doing apply and reapply pressure method gives him a little relief. This made the mother to ask this questions.The mother should act immediately to help the child to get rid of pain.