"I'm hoping a longer duration of breastfeeding will help form our little guy's mouth better and give his tongue a better range of motion. We'll see!"
I have nursed all of my children long term (well over three years for each one of them) and can only believe that it did help them to compensate. Three out of four have tongue ties. None were clipped. All were very verbal and no problems with speech initially. Second child now has some difficulty with pronouncing "s" and fits Dr Palmer's profile for Obstructive Sleep Apnea. I am now looking into whether or not as a teenager she should have it clipped not because her speech is so terribly affected and NOT to make sure she can kiss with gusto (which is one comment given to TT people) but because of the possible apnea.
Mendy
LLLL
Jan 11, 2010 08:07:57 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
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Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:54:25 -0500
From: "Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC"
Subject: Re: tongue ties
Not true that if a tt child could bf, the tt would not be the cause of
any speech issues. Speech and feeding use different tongue movements.
For bf, one needs to keep the anterior tongue grooved around the nipple
to maintain a seal, drop the posterior tongue to enlarge the intraoral
space, hold the bolus on the grooved, dropped posterior tongue until
it's safe to swallow... For speech, one needs to lift the anterior
tongue to the front of the top teeth, to the palate, lift other parts of
the tongue to the roof of the mouth, and many other things that I'm no
specialist in! If you are interested in speech and tongue-tie, Carmen
Fernando has a great book on the topic (TT from Confusion to Clarity)
for sale in the ILCA bookstore or on Amazon.com.
There seems to be wiggle room in both processes - in other words, you
don't have to be perfect to be functional as a human being
(fortunately), but just because one works doesn't mean both will. I have
a bunch of little ones with Down syndrome and other genetic disorders in
my practice who managed to breastfeed with some initial help (sometimes
a lot of initial help) but are having much more difficulty with clear
speech than they did with feeding.
Catherine Watson Genna, BS, IBCLC NYC
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Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:04:39 -0500
From: Laura Wasielewski
Subject: speech & tongue ties
The speech pathologist has to weigh in on the subject now that we're all talking about speech sounds and tongue tie (a.k.a. ankyloglossia)! I agree with Cathy Genna, first of all, you can have problems with speech and not breastfeeding or vice versa. The tongue is made up of MULTIPLE muscles and the function is different for different tasks. Second, the "sausages" statement by the dentist kills me. Studies in the speech world (on English speakers) show the "s" sound comes in anywhere from age 4 to as late as age 8 with the average being closer to age 5. The g in sausages (sounds like "j" in "jump") is also a later developing sound, coming in on average after 5 years as well. Not to mention the fact that the word is multi-syllabic. So please, no one panic if your four-year-old can't clearly articulate sausages. She is still well within the range of normal!
See this website for more info on normal speech sound development:
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/SpeechSoundDisorders.htm
In general the speech pathology world is not seeing speech problems in the majority of tongue tied kids. Someone already posted the link to this article, but it's a great look into the speech perspective on the subject & it has references for some interesting studies:
http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2005/051227/f051227a.htm
Now my personal experiences (and perhaps biases), I am married to a man with a very restrictive lingual frenulum with no history of speech problems. He does not make all of his speech sounds in the exact same way that I do, but there are acceptable variations of normal within the speech therapy world. His mother is the same. Small sample size, I know! I have been working with babies and feeding/swallowing for about 5 years now, but in my previous life as an early intervention and elementary school speech pathologist the only tongue tied children I saw who also had speech/articulation disorders were those who did not have normal cognition (i.e. those with learning disabilities and/or mental retardation). I wonder if children with normal cognition are generally able to compensate for their anatomical differences whereas others may not be able to???
I'm also the mother of a tongue tied three-month-old! I don't have all the answers. I did have sore, pinched nipples (no open wounds) for the first four weeks even with perfect positioning, but then it magically got better. Baby boy is gaining weight well and I'm not worried about his speech so we've chosen not to clip. Dad did have orthodontia so we may have to do that at some point BUT dad was only breastfed for three weeks before his mom went back to work. I'm hoping a longer duration of breastfeeding will help form our little guy's mouth better and give his tongue a better range of motion. We'll see!
I've enjoyed hearing everyone's thoughts on the issue!
-Laura Wasielewski MS, CCC-SLP, IBCLC
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End of LACTNET Digest - 11 Jan 2010 - Special issue (#2010-52)
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