Hallie Bulkin says clinicians spot tongue-tie anatomy but skip the feeding assessment that actually matters. A structured functional evaluation shows whether restriction is really causing the problem, cutting through guesswork and unnecessary surgery.
Many clinicians are taught, right, what TIES look like, what classification exists, what red flags to watch for, and fewer are taught like, how do we assess feeding function systematically? How do we prioritize our findings? How do we decide what matters before making recommendations? This is exactly why feeding assessment is such a critical skill, especially in our tethered oral tissue cases, right? It helps you decide like, is there restriction the main driver? Is it just one contributor? Or is it the focus right now, or is it not? Okay, so again, in Feed the Peeds, we spend a significant amount of time teaching clinicians how to assess feeding in a structured way so the decisions are not based on assumptions, pressure, or incomplete analysis. Because when you understand feeding function, you don't have to guess, you don't have to default to anatomy, you don't have to rush forward or away from release. You can make recommendations that are grounded in what the child is actually doing during feeding.
What I Was Missing in Feeding Therapy: ARFID, Airway, and Myo with Samy Hernandez
