Funny Family Tale #1 - Strange Habits that are not funny at the time!

Hello fellow readers, I hope you are well.

I promised a funny family story today as I have plenty of those however this one in particular is about a very strange habit (which is not funny).   I wasn't sure what to share and I have so many disgusting stories too - but I didn't want to make anyone's stomach turn during my first story so I have taken a more serious issue for this post.

I decided it best to start with the eldest child and she had quite a strange habit but the funny part is how I managed to stop her from doing it!

My daughter was quite a demanding child (and still is now at the age of 10).  From a very young age, she developed this really annoying habit and would put anything furry/fluffy into her mouth and chew it as if it were chewing gum.  The habit itself was actually worrying because I was worried in case she swallowed it and she did this regularly with anything she could find that was fury or fluffy.  I became obsessed with removing any fur or fluff from the household, and checking she hadn't put anything in her mouth that she shouldn't.

It started to get out of hand and by the age of 2 she would pull fluff from my cardigans.  I had already given away my furry cushions and throw that went with my decor in the front room.  She had a dummy and even then, she would prefer to put it in her mouth.  She couldn't have cardigans because she would pull fluff from the wool, if we went to anyone's house that had furry throws, she would run her fingers through it slyly and pop it in her mouth.  I tried explaining to her that this was really bad for her and dangerous as it wasn't meant to be eaten, I told her the whole cats coughing up fur-balls, I even started to tell her off and put her on a time out if she put any fluff or fur in her mouth.  I spoke to the health visitor, doctors, but no advice worked!

I was at my wits end and I didn't know what to do.  I told her I was just going to give her fluff at meal times if that's all she wanted to eat, but it didn't seem to affect her.  One day, we went to a carnival and there were carnival rides.  I walked past the sweet shop and noticed some candy floss.  I laughed because it reminded me of fluff/fur and I wondered how she would react if I gave her this and told her to eat it.

I got a bag of pink and blue candy floss and leaned over the pushchair.  'Here is your dinner,' I said.  She looked at me.  'What is it?' she asked.  'It's fluff!' I said casually.  'I did tell you that if you continued to eat fluff I would start feeding you it, so eat away.'

She looked very confused that I had given her this.  I opened it and offered some to her but she refused.  I explained - this is nice, and you can eat it, it's a form of sweets, and she tasted it.  She loved it!  It wasn't the best thing in the world to give her, because of the sugar content, but it was a treat.  This strange little trick worked, because she stopped putting the fluff in her mouth - she still picked it and pulled at it because she must have liked the feel, but for some reason, offering her candy floss - which she called candy fluff for 2-3 years after the event, seemed to stop the obsession with eating the plain, inedible fur/fluff.

It's strange because  I didn't expect this to work, in fact I thought I was going to confuse her further by telling her this was fluff she could eat.  Maybe the taste of the candy floss made her realise that other fluff and fur wasn't nice, whereas edible fluff was!

Maybe it was just a coincidence that she stopped just after I offered her the bag of candy floss to eat, I don't really know for certain as who knows what goes on in the mind of a two year old?  What I do know is that this obsession with putting fluff and fur in her mouth was really strange, and dangerous if she was swallowing it and I was so upset with this weird habit.  I was so pleased that this stopped and it's quite ironic that by offering her candy floss, it seemed to really curb this obsession.

Have your children had any weird habits?  How did you deal with this?


Laters, Janet