How to cut children’s nails

Just like cutting little hairs or brushing little teeth, trimming nails can be a challenge for many parents. How do you go about it so it’s comfortable for both sides?

Showing and explaining

First of all, it’s important not to push too hard. As we know from physics, pressure creates counterpressure, and that’s exactly what we don’t want when trimming nails. You need to take it slowly. Ideally, talk to your child about it and explain why trimming is important and what happens if you don’t shorten the nails.

Even to very small babies you can show and explain what you are doing and why. They won’t answer you for a while yet, but they perceive the tone of your voice, and if they sense that you are not pressuring them, that you respect them and they can fully give themselves over to you, they will start cooperating.

If the child has an older sibling at home with whom nail trimming is a piece of cake, then you’ve almost won, because children like to imitate others, especially those closer to them in age. With siblings, it can therefore be much easier. Alternatively, you can trim your own nails or your husband’s so the child can see that this is how it’s done, and you’ll manage it together too.

Distraction

It’s not an ideal solution, but at first you can trim nails while watching a fairy tale or listening to a song, or during any other activity in which the child doesn’t notice what is happening to their nails.

When the child is asleep

When nothing else works, you can trim nails while the child sleeps in bed or even in a wrap/carrier. There’s nothing unusual about it; lots of parents do it this way. It may be that you can trim the fingernails without any problem and the child cooperates beautifully, but you only trim the toenails when they’re asleep, or vice versa.

Replace scissors with a file

Instead of scissors, you can try a nail file, which the child can feel and try out without any problem. Compared with scissors, it’s a more time-consuming process, but the child will gain more trust in the file, because you won’t have a problem letting them hold it. Scissors, whether pointed or with rounded tips, are simply dangerous for children, and we don’t just hand them over. A file doesn’t work very well for shortening toenails, but if it solves fingernails for you, then you’re halfway there.

In parenting there are many activities that can be demanding for parents, such as brushing little teeth, cutting first little hairs, starting solid foods, choosing the first shoes, potty training a child, and many, many more. You’ll get used to it, things will beautifully fall into place with your child, and then something else will come along, another parenting challenge. But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? We’re never bored, we’re always learning, enriching one another, growing together. We keep our fingers crossed for nail trimming.