Orofacial myofunctional therapy with Lily ~ Week 3

All right, Lily wants to do a quick check in of her exercises. Lily, nice job. Look at that nice jaw control that we've established. And can you go in and out? Lil, wanna try it, too? Good. And show us your bowl. Good job. And show us how you suction your tongue up to the top of your mouth. Mm. And go back to tongue on the spot. Whoa. Look how good you got at that. So one thing that we were just practicing. Hello, Mia's head. What is that face? You're making it. Everybody, careful. Okay, guys, Got a little bit crazy there. So, basically, what I was trying to tell you was that Lily's excelling at the exercises that we're working on. However, it's not all about exercise. And I really want to drive that point home, because what everybody needs to realize is that myofunctional therapy has a set of goals we're trying to achieve. Just like any therapy, whether you're in physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy. Right. You're in that therapy because there's a reason or something. You know, there's a reason. There's something that we need to achieve or remediate. Right. So in this case, and when you typically are doing myofunctional therapy, common goals are things like achieving correct oral rest, posture, and making sure that the tongue is resting where it should in the mouth or while the child is doing passive activities like playing a game or riding a bike or reading a book or doing their homework or playing with a friend or just watching tv, whatever. But also, that tongue should be in a certain position in the mouth when chewing. It needs to be able to help lateralize the food side to side. It also needs to be in a certain position to form the bolus, which is the prepared food, as well as needs to be in a certain position when switching, swallowing. And so these are common things that we address in myofunctional therapy. Hello, myofunctional therapy child. What's up, kiddo? And so with Lily in particular, we're working. She actually has a really nice oral. A closed mouth posture, I should say. So we're not addressing that. So you're not gonna see that here. So don't take what I'm doing with her and just assume that it applies to anybody who needs mayo. Not the case. This is very individualized. For Lily specifically, we are working on putting the tongue on the spot. And the spot, for those of you who are not familiar, is 2 to 3 millimeters behind the upper central incisors. There's like, that alveolar ridge, that little bumpy ridge. We want the tip of the tongue to rest up there. And for most people, the front third or half of their tongue may also rest up in their mouth. So it's not just the tip, but you'll hear me say tongue to spot a lot, because we're trying to achieve a new habit. And when we can build a new habit, create a new habit, and get that tongue up, up, up, the rest of it will typically follow. Right. Can you show them how you. How you put your tongue up in your mouth really nicely? No. Okay, she's hungry, so we have to go make dinner. Not gonna be showing you any of that right now, so you can show them if you like, while I'm talking. But you see how she has a nice closed mouth posture. It's not effortful for her. Her mouth is very. Her lips come together really easily is what I mean by that. And for some of my patients, it doesn't. And so we have to work on that, but we don't have to work on that with Lily. What we're working on, like I said, is where that tongue is at rest and where that tongue is when swallowing. Because the tongue. And also speech, it impacts speech. But what I find is, with our MYO program, I often don't have to directly treat the speech in all cases, because when we correct where the tongue is at rest, and we correct where the tongue is when swallowing, speech follows. So Lily's very tired, right? Yeah, I'm hungry and I gotta go feed her. But what we were doing was we were working on a game, and I was encouraging her to keep her tongue up in her mouth while we played the game. And instead of saying, you know, put your tongue up, put your tongue up, put your tongue up, I was asking her, where is your tongue? Where is your tongue? And every time one of us took a turn, I checked in, and then I dropped it down to every three turns, right? She took a turn. Mia took a turn, I took a turn, and then I checked in, and again, I just said, hmm, where's that tongue? And after a while, instead of saying, hmm, where's your tongue? I just go, hmm. And she kind of knew that was like a cue to check in, like, where's my tongue? So I kind of backed off. Right. This is how what we do oftentimes in therapy, for those of you who are therapists and watching this, I backed off my direct cues and gave more indirect cueing so that she kind of knew to check in. And the whole goal here is that this becomes more habitual for her and easier for her to start self monitoring. Okay, so that, that is our goal. And I know we're only a couple weeks into this, but I like to work on this really early on in the program because one, my goal is to get a kid in and out as fast as possible. But two, you can't create new habits if you don't start working on them. Right? So that is our goal. Little Miss Tired Hungry Girlfriend over here is melting in my lap. And by the way, I need some ideas. What should I put in those picture frames back there? Let me know. Anywho. Yeah. This is my office and it's still a work in progress. I get busy with life and don't continue to decorate. Woohoo. But anyways, guys, so that's that. So we will link the videos that we want you to see or the videos, I'm sorry, the exercises you want to see that she's been working on. And I think the only one we didn't show them, Lily, was a posterior release. Do you want to show them that or not? Right now? Yeah. Okay, come on up. Come on up so they can see you. So we already attached the front of this. The other ones we did. So can we go like this? Can you go to the suction and then end with your tongue up on the spot? Good. So we're basically suctioning and then popping the back of our tongue off. The reason why this is important is because it's a movement that we do when swallowing. When you have a normal functioning swallow that is a part of it. And that's not something that a lot of my patients do. And Lily wasn't doing that. That either, but. What are you doing? But she figured out in like one night how to quickly achieve that, which is very impressive, my dear. I'm very proud of you. So while she sits over here and makes her faces at you, I'm just gonna give her a big hug because I'm super proud of her. She's learning everything really quickly. And this is part of phase one, where we're basically just pulling everything apart. We're pulling apart the swallow and teaching her the individual steps. And then we're gonna pull it all back together and integrate it with food and water and make it super functional again. Yes, honey, hold on one second. All right, guys, so that's all we've got for you today. We hope this is helpful. And let us know what questions you have. Bye. You want to say bye, Lil? Bye. Bye. From the hungry, tired girl.