Tongue tie and lip tie

[drjuliadc]

My 25 month old daughter has both a tongue tie and a lip tie that was found when I had trouble breastfeeding at birth.  She has a twin brother and he had a tongue tie that was corrected at that time.  He did not have the lip tie.

 

Hers was not corrected at the time because she had a tiny heart murmur and the dentist who does the corrections wanted her to see the cardiologist first. By the time she saw the cardiologist I had given up on breastfeeding (there was too much of a supply issue because of my Hashimoto's Thyroiditis) so I never corrected hers.

 

He is speaking very clearly now and she is not. She is speaking quite a bit, but not clearly. I know that there is a individual difference in language development but I want to make sure I don't leave something unattended that will cause problems later.

 

Does anyone have any idea if I can wait to see if this is just developmental or if I should just get it clipped now?  I thought I would ask here since you all have been through a lot.

 

I doubt the lip tie is a problem but I can see the tongue tie being one.

 

Julia

[PeterPan]

You might want to do some googlefu on it. If googling lip tie doesn't turn up much, use upper frenulum tie. My googlefu is turning up all kinds of consequences associated with leaving it untreated. As always, it's a choice. Personally, I think it sucks to be on the receiving end of "oh it won't matter" and finding out it does. So many things people say that about, turns out they just didn't know enough to realize the consequences.

[Crimson Wife]

My Articulation Disorders professor presented evidence that it affects articulation and should be corrected. All 3 of my kids had tongue tie and the one who did not have it corrected as an infant (I listened to an idiot lactation nurse at the hospital who claimed he was fine) has had articulation issues.

 

For the kids who had it done as infants the frenulectomy was literally 30 seconds and no blood. Holding the baby still for the Novocain injection took longer and was more traumatic than the cutting of the frenulum

 

The one who did not have the frenulectomy until he was a toddler had to have surgery with general anesthesia due to his age. I wish that we had done it in infancy

 

 

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[geodob]

The earlier the better, as he will learn to speak with the tongue tie.  Which will be difficult to change, if he has it done later.

 

With the lip tie, an important thing with this?  Is that it makes cleaning the teeth difficult, and typically causes teeth decay.  So that it's well worth it, just to avoid the dentist.

 

Though another factor, is that both ties can cause food to be left around the gums.  As tongue tie can prevent the tip of the tongue from accessing and removing food from around the gums, and lip tie can trap food.  

[Selkie]

For what it's worth, I'm 48 and have a tongue tie and it has never caused me any problems. I didn't even know I had it until a doctor noticed it and told me when I was 18 or 19 years old. It has had no effect on my life and I've always been able to speak and articulate clearly.

[Noreen Claire]

DS3 had serious nursing issues, and I first took him to a pediatric ENT at children's hospital in Boston and that was an expensive, bloody mistake that didn't help. I drove the 3 hours to Dr. Kotlow and the laser took 5 minutes total (tongue and lip ties) and breastfeeding was immediately improved.

 

Around the same time, DS5 was evaluated for early intervention due to articulation problems. (He never had trouble nursing.) I brought him to Dr. Kotlow at age 3 for the lip and tongue ties. As he was older and had already had a bad experience with a dentist, he was given Versed first. The procedure took 5 minutes. He healed well. He is still in speech therapy for articulation issues. I had wished that we had known about his ties earlier, before he started talking, and maybe he wouldn't have the trouble he has now.

[PeterPan]

There are degrees of tongue tie, and it depends on the language. When I was in Russia, I made friends with someone who was very hard for me to understand. Russian has trilled and flapped Rs. Turns out her tongue tie was so significant she couldn't lift her tongue to make the /r/ sounds! She literally had to make them in the back of her mouth, which is technically a sound but a totally different sound. They have that in other languages (ukranian, etc.) but not in russian. So she made it work, but it took me a while, as a learner to figure out what in the WORLD she was doing, lol. 

[wapiti]

FWIW, I have heard that these types of ties can, in the long run, affect the microbiome (and in turn the immune system) in negative ways due to the effects on swallowing.  (ETA, I haven't actually researched it myself.)

 

My kiddo with all sorts of immune issues and a history of "severe" developmental delay and speech delay (in speech therapy till 9 y.o.) had a full tongue tie fixed during a surgery for other things at 8 months old. He is now doing well academically in high school, with his most significant struggle being a B in French.  I have occasionally wondered whether the tie was cut back far enough but never got around to having it looked at.

 

I think most of my kids have had a lip tie.  Many kids with a lip tie will break it at some point when they accidentally smack their mouth on something hard, as I did when I was a kid.

 

For a child with issues of any kind, I'd be inclined to have the lip and tongue tie fixed without delay.

Edited October 27, 2017 by wapiti

[caedmyn]

All 4 of my boys have tongue ties. Only the youngest's was corrected with a laser...twice...and it reattached both times in spite of the stretches. The whole thing was a nightmare basically, though the amount of improvement he ended up with did help nursing and his reflux. Of my other 3, one has speech issues (mild I think? Looking at a year of speech therapy total). The SLP says she thinks he would have had speech issues regardless of the tongue tie, and I'm inclined to agree, because some of the sounds he has trouble with require very little tongue movement. He does have quite severe reflux though I don't think that's caused by the tongue tie. I wanted to have it corrected a few months ago but the dentist who did my other child won't do kids between 6 mo and 5 yo, and the other dentist I took him to said because h can stuck his tongue out he's fine. She supposedly knew about posterior ties. I wasn't impressed.

[exercise_guru]

My daughter had a toungue tie but she was an outstanding nurser so I didn't worry about it. When she was around 7 we noticed she had speach challenges with the letter R. A speach therapist did all she could to help stretch it out but it was really a year of wasted therapy. My daughter had to get her tonsils out and at that time we had the toungue tie repaired. Luckily it made a huge difference and she speaks quite clearly after a year of therapy. If I  could do it again I would have fixed that when she was an infant and learning speech.

 

My son had a different problem. He was a terrible nurser. I stuck with it but now he is 9 and I found out he has  a retained reflex of toungue jaw disassociation. It significantly affected his speach and once we did tons of exercises to correct it now he speaks normally. With 1 more year of therapy he will probably advance through all of the R sounds.  I am disappointed that the experts I consulted didn't help us when he was an infant. Some simple exercises would have probably fixed the problem and saved him years of discouragement and grief.  

 

In hindsight there is much I would have done to help my kids develop better. The best thing I did was read and talk to them a lot. I wish with my son I had done more. 

 

 

[drjuliadc]

Thanks you guys. You had more experience than I thought you would.

 

I spoke to a speech pathologist and she asked me if my daughter was intelligible. I think she is, and actually is getting a lot better. She told me not to worry about it then. Quite different from your experiences though, so I'm keeping my ear on it. My gut feeling tells me she will be OK, but I'm a bit of a Pollyanna.

 

Sometimes it is bad to have another individual the exact same age to always compare to. I think her twin's excellent articulation might be making her sound bad but I also think it motivates her to do better.

[PeterPan]

As the parent you aren't the one to gauge intelligibility. You're used to how she sounds, so intelligibility is with strangers, people who aren't used to her.

 

We calculated intelligibility on my ds frequently over the years, because of his apraxia. You can be intelligible and NOT have all your sounds. 

 

Personally I think that would suck to be the twin who didn't get treated. We've had that happen on the boards. If you look up my old threads on apraxia from 7.5 years ago, you'll find that very scenario. A lady who was a twin talked about how her twin got speech therapy and she didn't, with them saying oh you're not bad enough to need it. The twin who didn't receive therapy and hence had less ease with speech, really, really regretted it!

 

The easiest way not to regret it is to intervene. The harm, to me, is in NOT intervening, not in the reverse. Or is there harm in intervening?