Hallie Bulkin leads Lily through week 4 of orofacial myofunctional therapy, focusing on tongue control exercises. The session emphasizes lateralization, moving the tongue side-to-side, as the key skill for next week to improve chewing and food tolerance.
Hey, guys. Hallie and Lily here. Mia's here, too. And Lily has been licking around her lips, which I still think is an airway thing. Been a little bit congested. So we have not done a lot of work this past week. So we're kind of doing a check in. But disclaimer. We have not practiced real life. People not gonna sit here and pretend like we're perfect, because we are not. Right? Yeah. So this is actually the next practice session since the last one we did. We maybe did a little practice like the night after the last time we recorded, but we have not done anything pretty much in the past week. So this is a practice session. We're gonna do a check in. And the goal right now for Lily is still making sure that we can dissociate her tongue from the rest of her face. Right. We want to make sure that it's not working with her lips or her jaw, but it's able to work on its own. Very good, Lily. Now, do you think you can take your finger away? And if you hear that chewing, that's Mia doing her mayo work, right, Mia? Yeah. Let's see. Let's show you guys. While Lily's practicing that, see if I can show you what Mia's doing. Mia's over here chewing, chomping away. Right? Good job. Work, Mia. Awesome. Okay, so Lily and I show them how you open your mouth really wide and move the tongue side to side. Good. Now, you'll notice you still have to create a lot of tension and open really wide to achieve that. Hey, Lily, can you close your mouth a little bit and do it? And then when we do that, it goes back to that bottom lip. So we're still working on that. And for some kids, it takes longer. And for mothers, when we don't. For others, I should say when we don't practice, we're in the same place we were last week. But that's okay. We are getting there. Right now, can you show them how you stick your tongue out and back in? Awesome. So that's gotten really easy for her. She has gotten much better at that. We won't bore you with ton of repetitions. I know it's not hard for you. Can you go up and down with your tongue? I do that too. You do that, too. No, up and down behind the teeth. Keep it in your mouth. Good. Now go up, huh? And down. Up, up. Yeah, you've got that. You've had that one for a while. Can you make a bowl? Super duper. Awesome. So that's one thing we have achieved. And we actually got that last time. We haven't checked on that in a week. And you maintain the bowl. Hey, Mia, you're moving the table, honey. Careful. Okay. Excuse me. No more moving the table. Oh, boy. This is gonna get interesting. Okay, so we've got the bowl. Now can you do that release of the back of the tongue. Wait, no movements here. Just the tongue's working. And the jaw. Ready. Oops. Try again. Aha. We got it. Let's do it. Can you do it five times? Oh, is this hard? Are you tired? It is like 7:30 at night when we're recording this. So let's try two more. Okay, we'll make you do five. Let's just do two. You ready? You already got it a couple times. Ready? Remember, it's suction. Tongue to spot. You got it. You got it. You got it. All right. Okay. Soon. Okay. So one thing I really want her to work on. Hey, Emily, will you hold your suction for us? One thing I really want her to work on is making sure that the tongue is lateralizing side to side. And the reason why that is so important for her is because we are pretty selective in our foods. And we need to make sure we have good control. Moving the tongue from one side to the other. So that we can move food from one set of molars to the the other. So we can use our big dino chompers, right. To break down all that food. That's a little bit chewier and harder for us to eat. Because we. We tend to gravitate towards softer, easier to chew food. Right, Mom? But we're working on that. So. But that's why lateralization is super, super important to Lily. So it might not look like we've made a ton of progress since last week, because we haven't. But this is real life, and this is what happens. And even those of us in the field are not perfect. We. Right. Imperfect action is what we're doing right here. Whoops. Told ya. Imperfect action. Even though we didn't practice, we're showing up to show you what we're. What we're capable of. But she is using her tonga much more independently compared to before. And when we started, we just gotta really get good with that lateralization. So that's her big number one goal over the next week. And we're not gonna work on too much more. Because I really wanna make sure that we get that lateralization under, you know, really under control. And then we're going to jump into the second phase where, where we pull everything back in. So at the beginning of the next video, our goal is to show you her lateralization skills and then also show you how we start to pull everything together and integrate it so it becomes more functional and kind of make sure the tongue is now working with all of its supporting muscles. Right. And structures. No. No. Okay. And we'll start to add in elements, like, you know, water and food and all that fun stuff. Cool, Lil. All right, have a good night, guys. Hallie and Lily signing off. Say bye. Bye.
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