Thumb-sucking sometimes goes with the blanket fetish, but as the months and even years go by, we parents can get sick of our child’s increasingly ragged scrap. Then we’ll try anything. Should we throw the darn thing in the dumpster? Take it away and allow it only at bedtime? Or should we just lock it up?

Even in the comic strip, Lucy says to Linus, “If only you knew how nauseated I get every time I see you holding that stupid blanket!”

Adults have favorites, too. I know a man who takes his home pillow on business trips. Another who keeps a blank check in his wallet, won’t mow the lawn without his wallet in his hip pocket and only one kind of underwear will do.

I know a woman who keeps an unopened bottle of 100 Tums in her car and replaces it with another—not when it is empty, but when it is opened.

Should we lock up the pillow, blank checks, wallet and Tums bottle? Of course not, these folks are adults and have a right to do as they please.

When should you cross over and start interfering? How far do you want to go in your meddling with your child’s habits? When is it a problem? And whose problem is it?

The world presents a lot of stress and our kids don’t understand much of it. They need their routines to manage the turmoil. Parents must make judgment calls about these mild compulsions and need to do occasional soul-searching to discover if the problem is only in the mind of the beholder. If Lucy bites her fingernails but not excessively, maybe Mom should tolerate it. But if Linus insists on taking his blanket to school, it could be a problem for him and his parents.

Talking, nagging and threatening may become rewarding entertainment even when the child continues arguing and objecting to the corrections. A conscious choice can clean up the family airways. Threats, not carried out, only increase the stress: “I’m going to throw that blanket in the trash!”

Instead of relying on threats, it’s better to use a smaller consequence that is so mild that you can use it repeatedly without hesitating or feeling you are too harsh. A creeping deadline is sometimes good: “After lunch, your Poo bear is off limits until 2 o’clock; week two it is 2:15; then 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, and until after dinner.

Bringing in a reward is often a good encouragement: “When the time is over, we’ll have your afternoon treat.” Fading is also often a good strategy. “All knuckle-cracking has to be done upstairs” (later, only in his room)—no limit on the behavior, just a limit on where.

Both the creeping-time and shrinking-place strategies have also been used successfully with adult smoking habits. If all of this seems like too much for your child’s problem, it may be time to stop the nagging as well.