You may have noticed that your child kept their mouth open all the time, however, you didn’t think much of it. Let’s talk about mouth breathing and why you should take actions to change that.
Chronic mouth breathing may have a huge impact on your child’s health and development, not to mention your wallet. From speech and feeding challenges to sleep disturbances and struggles at school, changes to facial structures and dental conditions – mouth breathing is not an innocent habit, it is often a red flag concern.
So, what is mouth breathing, why is it a problem, and what role does a speech language pathologist play in myofunctional therapy?
Chronic mouth breathing can affect several areas of a child’s development:
Facial and Jaw Development
A habit of mouth breathing can lead to noticeable irreversible changes in the bone structures of a child’s face and jaw, such as a long, narrow face, recessed chin, weak jawline, a high-arched palate, and a sad looking facial expression with drooping eyes.
Dental Issues
Open mouth posture can contribute to dental misalignments, teeth overcrowding, and malocclusions that would require braces. A narrow palate due to a tongue low position would most likely mean orthodontic treatment of the palate expansion, or even a surgical intervention. Nevertheless, even after drastic procedures a rehabilitation therapy from a speech language pathologist would be necessary to retrain the tongue, lips, and cheeks to function correctly for chewing, swallowing, and breathing.
Feeding Challenges:
Mouth breathing often means low oral muscle tone causing chewing and swallowing difficulties and, as a result, cause picky or troubled eating and oral motor delays.
Sleep Quality:
Often the mouth breathers snore, grind their teeth, or experience sleep apnea. The latter could cause various unpleasant consequences from frequent bed wetting to struggles with memory, learning and attention, as well as affected mood. Kids’ behavior becomes more like that of kids with ADHD.
Overall Health:
Nose breathing is crucial for nitric oxide production – health gas responsible for blood vessel dilation, nerve transmission, immune responses, and other bodily vital functions. Statistically, children with mouth breathing tend to get sick more often than nose breathers.
Speech Development:
Children with mouth breathing often have low tongue posture, an immature swallow pattern and tongue thrust, which causes certain sounds production errors. Sounds like /s/, /z/, /sh/,/zh/, /ch/, /dzh/, /r/, /l/ and /th/ articulated incorrectly could affect clarity of speech and jeopardize quality of communication and psycho-emotional well-being of a child.
How a Speech Language Pathologist and Myofunctional Therapist Can Help?
Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy (OMT) targets the retraining of facial muscles for correct chewing, swallowing, and breathing functions. A therapy program includes:
Teaching proper tongue rest position;
Strengthening the tongue, lips, and cheeks muscles;
Facilitating lip closure for nasal breathing all the time, including during sleep;
Support proper chewing and swallowing of various consistencies;
Relaxation and stimulation massages and kinesio tape application;
Overall body posture through daily brief exercises.
It is important to remember that a speech language pathologist would be able to help a child to retrain nose breathing and reverse tongue thrust through a series of exercises, massages, and daily activities up until the age of 5 years. After the age of 5 and till about the age of 9, an orthodontic intervention for a palate expansion would be necessary. However, past that age, a surgical procedure would be required to fix the issue. Timing is critical and essential in addressing a mouth breathing habit.
How can parents help their children at home?
If you suspect your child is a mouth breather not due to temporary reasons of a stuffy nose or occasional allergies, you may try following steps:
Encourage nasal breathing during quiet play, TV watching, or reading time by verbal reminders, visual signs. Placing a popsicle stick between closed lips will provide a tactile feedback and reminder to keep the mouth closed.
Practice blowing bubbles big and small.
Ask your pediatrician, dentist, orthodontist, ENT about possible reasons for your child’s mouth breathing.
Consult and request an evaluation from an SLP for a mouth breathing habit and tongue thrust.
