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The Truth About "Low Tone" in Down Syndrome

26 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this personal monologue, Hallie Bulkin explains what "low tone" looks like in her son with Down syndrome, describing the characteristic "chunkiest, most squeezable" cheeks and reduced muscle responsiveness. She clarifies that low tone is a common hallmark of Down syndrome and discusses how it affects the child's everyday function. To compensate, she outlines the interventions they employ: weekly physical therapy to build stamina and endurance, regular massage, and targeted strength and endurance exercises. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding low tone beyond the buzzword and shares practical ways families can address it.

Chapters

And it's like, but what does that mean? What does that look like? How are they presenting? My son's tone is low, but it's not super low. And we're working on building his strength and endurance to compensate for that. He gets PT once a week, so that's been really helpful to help build up some of that stamina and endurance to compensate for the low tone. Looking, just like to just look at his face. Everyone comments on his cheeks. They're like, oh my gosh, look at his cheeks. I wanna squeeze 'em. I wanna squeeze 'em. I'm like, that's because they have low tone. His muscles aren't responding the way, you know, our muscles typically do. So yes, he's got the chunkiest, most squeezable cheeks in the world, but we're working on building up some ways to compensate for that with massage and, you know, things like that. But I think that's like one of the biggest like bellringer words or phrases with Down syndrome. And it's like, okay, but what does that really mean? And how do we work on that?