You might be thinking to yourself, “what could be so important about the tongue?” And I’m here to tell you! The tongue carries many responsibilities– it is a muscle and an organ. Our tongues help us eat, breathe, speak, clean our teeth, and also function to grow our palates, facial structures, and airways!
Eating
This one is an obvious one. The tongue accepts food into the mouth, transfers it back and forth for chewing, and then creates a bowl and elevates for swallowing. However, without proper range of motion or muscle tone, these functions are not optimally performed. When this happens, we tend to gravitate towards foods that don’t need a lot of chewing and are easy to swallow–ie. picky eating. This may look like a child that is unwilling to eat meat or will only eat sandwiches with the crust cut off. We also see gagging, choking, and messy eating.
Breathing
Say what? The tongue helps us breathe? YES! The tongue should rest comfortably inside the oral cavity, elevated and suctioned against the palate. Without the neuromuscular education and proper range of motion to keep the tongue elevated, air is passing through our mouths when it should be passing through our noses. Mouth breathing is detrimental to our health and well being, does not promote optimal growth and development, and can lead to serious sleep concerns like obstructive sleep apnea or sleep disordered breathing. If you or your child is chronically breathing through the mouth, day or night, it needs to be addressed.
Read: Why Is Nasal Breathing So Important?
Speaking
Another obvious one! Our tongue is coordinated to touch specific areas of our teeth or palate and contort in different positions to make speech sounds. And again, without proper range of motion or muscle tone, these functions are not optimally performed. A child with tethered tissues may have a hard time saying certain sounds due to this limited range of motion. Speech therapy is a powerful tool and can also address swallowing issues, but if your child is still in speech therapy with little improvement, it may be time to schedule a consult with a myofunctional therapist and have muscle tone and tongue range of motion evaluated.
Teeth cleaning
Our tongue also functions to sweep across the teeth to clear out any left-behind food. How annoying would it be to have to pull out a toothbrush or floss after every bite? We instinctively use our tongues to reach difficult areas of the mouth and remove food. Children and adults with limited range of motion may experience gumline decay.
Growing palatal bone
As mentioned above, our tongues should rest against the palate. With proper tone, our tongues place pressure against the bones of the palate. This pressure puts stress on the bone structure and pushes the palate broader and more forward. With a broad and forward palate, we can erupt all 32 of our teeth and there is adequate space for our tongues to live inside the mouth and out of the airway. The photo below depicts a man with inadequate palatal and tongue space. The tongue is against the palate but is still occluding the airway. It is best to catch children at a young age, while they’re still growing and correct the tongue posture for the most success in influencing growth and development of the palate and jaw.
How do we build strength?
Our tongues will naturally build tone starting at an early age by breastfeeding. Following breastfeeding, an introduction of hard foods that need a great deal of chewing (meats, raw vegetables, seeds, etc), will influence the strength of the tongue. While it’s important to make sure our children can safely handle the foods we serve them without choking, it’s also important to make sure we’re serving them foods that promote growth and development of the facial structure!