I had a bad habit of sucking my thumb when I was little. We tried wearing a sock on my hand during night time, putting the pepper tasting nail polish my thumb, didn’t work. Eventually, I just stopped. Instead I started becoming aware of when I would do it, and stopped. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I still had to get braces!
Another habit for A LOT of kids to stop is saying “like”. That habit is very bothersome. “I was like..getting um a like..a like..cup of..like coffee..you know..and I was like..ouch this is hot! So ya…it was like..really weird and like..ya” How do I have a conversation with someone? Just get to the point, you had coffee, you said ouch because it was hot, you won’t do that again. Done. Was that so hard? Apparently for these kids it is. My kids don’t have too much of a problem, but it just so happens that you come a cross a child, start a “conversation” and the next thing you know you’ve listened to this person ramble on about how they ‘like..did this and um..ya it was like really weird’. Wow that was so interesting! [you said like about..oh I don’t know, a million times for those few sentences. not to mention, there were some “yas” here and there.]
Anyway, like @toomuchcoffee911 had said, you realize your habits once you become conscious of them.