Experienced parents, please look at the picture on the right and tell me, Why does my 2 year-old do this? Just this morning, Maria sat down to color with a perfectly good red and green flip crayon - those of you who have used Handwriting without Tears materials will recognize these. I returned 2 minutes later and found half of the crayon in her mouth - she had bitten sizable chunks off either end and was rolling them around in her mouth.
So what's going on here? Does Maria have some sort of vitamin deficiency that she is unconsciously trying to compensate for? Perhaps she is teething and the crayon's texture actually feels great on her gums? Does the crayon secretly taste delicious? Or is she just being a naughty toddler? By the way, she has recently done the same thing several other times.
6 comments:
I remember when I was in elementary school I chewed on my pencils just because I really liked that sensation of my teeth pushing into the soft wood. It was a tactile sort of thing. I actually hated the way the pencil looked afterward but couldn't stop doing it. I also loved to roll marbles on my face, the cold of the glass just felt good on my cheeks. I suspect she's just exploring her environment using all of her senses and her mouth is just one more tool for doing so. It's not likely to be naughtiness unless you really think she's only doing it to provoke you. And may not be related to teething. I think less of children's oral explorations are do to teething that we parents like to believe.
My 21 month-old has done this for a very long time. I finally started storing the crayons up high and having my older ones primarily use colored pencils. I used to joke on my blog about a year ago...what color crayon will I find in his diaper today? He eats them like they're food.
Oh how I wish I knew. All three of my boys have done this but not my girl. Our oldest boy, 6.5 years, still eats things. He chews on all his pencils so that we have absolutely no pencils in the house with erasers or even the metal that holds the eraser. He used to quite regularly eat books as a toddler. Now he is a voracious reader - perhaps the two are linked.
p.s. Watch out for glue sticks - they hold a similar attraction!
My boys LOVED eating crayons too! Be thankful it is not dirt! My 3 yr old will still eat dirt and sand (his 6 yr old brother tells him to and he does!).
My kids put everything in their mouths. EVERYTHING.
Lots of kids have oral fixation issues, so I wouldn't be worried at all. I would try to have some things around that are more appropriate for her to chew...baby toys, soft books, chewy snacks etc. A lot of kids still have binkys at her age. Our baby recently ate a marker and his whole face and inside of his mouth was blue for days. He also eats sand and chalk on a daily basis.
Our oldest still has major oral fixation issues. I have been trying to get him to chew natural gum when he needs to settle down and focus, but he doesn't like it yet. He chews it for a minute and then spits it out.
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