Often, mothers find that babies like to clamp and rub their legs, clench their fists, stare with their eyes, flush their cheeks, sweat their forehead, and hold their breath. It usually takes 1-2 minutes to relieve, or when mothers stop, babies stop. Because of the short time and no serious consequences, parents tend to ignore it.

  However, it is likely to be a disease, which is called children's leg wiping syndrome in medicine. It is a behavioral disorder that children get excited by leg wiping and belongs to a kind of abnormal psychological behavior. It usually occurs at the age of 1-3, and girls are more than boys. The baby's intelligence is normal, and he is conscious when he attacks, mostly before sleep and after waking up. They like to sit on hard objects, press their legs or lower abdomen with hands, stretch their lower limbs and cross clamp them, and hold them tightly with both hands; The boy may also appear to lie down on the bed and rub back and forth. The attack will be accompanied by blushing and sweating. In girls, the vulva is congested, the secretion is increased or the labial pigment is aggravated after the attack; The boy's penis is erect, the urethral orifice is slightly congested, and there is slight edema.

There are several reasons for children's leg rub syndrome. One is the habit of repeated attacks caused by local stimulation of the vulva; The second is psychological factors. Some children are not satisfied emotionally due to tense family atmosphere, lack of maternal love, discrimination, etc., or they are bullied at school and have difficulties in social adaptation, so they seek to vent by rubbing their legs; Third, among older children, affected by yellow information, children actively wipe their legs to seek stimulation.

  When parents encounter this problem, they should understand it correctly. It does not represent or indicate that there is a problem in the child's quality. It is just a psychological behavior abnormality, which is similar to the prevention and treatment of masturbation. It can help children to adjust from the following aspects:

  First of all, parents should not be too nervous, and children should not be forcibly prohibited to avoid increasing their internal tension; Secondly, we should cultivate normal life rules, encourage children to work and rest on time, do not go to bed early, do not get up late or stay in bed in the morning, but also pay attention to the perineum hygiene of the baby, and remove all kinds of adverse stimuli; At the same time, a good family environment should be given to the children, and the warmth and caress of the children's families should be fully given; Cultivate their wide range of interests and hobbies, and encourage children to participate in various cultural and sports activities; Finally, we should pay attention to moral education and enhance psychological immunity.
    For children who are about to have an attack or are having an attack, they should try to divert their attention, use some interesting things to entice the children, or organize games for the children to participate. By adopting this kind of fading psychotherapy, children should slowly shift their interest to other games, so as to forget the habit of crossing arms and legs.

As long as we can correctly understand and take positive psychological and behavioral intervention measures, we can usually get a better prognosis.

Tan Lingfang, Second Department of Neurology and Internal Medicine, Hunan Children's Hospital