My baby is almost 3 years old and will start kindergarten soon, but he still can’t speak clearly, is it “tongue climbing”? Is it necessary to do a surgery to cut it off? The proverbial “tongue climbing” is in fact professionally known as “short tongue tie”. The tongue tie is a thin strip of tissue that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth when the tongue is pried up after opening the mouth. A normal tongue tie allows the tongue to move freely, with the tip of the tongue naturally sticking out of the mouth (or licking up into the upper gums). Normally, a newborn baby’s tongue tie extends to or near the tip of the tongue. During development, the tie gradually recedes toward the base of the tongue, and the tip of the tongue gradually moves away from the tie after 2 years of age. Only a few babies will have a short tongue tie. Therefore, short tongue tie in infants and children should be observed until after 2 years of age and should not be immediately recognized as abnormal. Also, surgery may not be necessary for mild and most moderate cases of short tongue tie. Children’s inability to pronounce words, not all short tongue tie Many parents always attribute their children’s inability to pronounce words and spit out words to the short tongue tie, letting it indiscriminately take the blame for many years. In fact, there are many reasons for mispronunciation, and a short tongue tie is only one of them. There are two main reasons for the inability to pronounce: one is congenital physiological defects, teeth, tongue, oral structure, sinuses and other organs related to pronunciation dysfunction, such as congenital cleft lip and cleft palate, missing or malformed teeth and tongue tie is too short, etc.; the second is caused by acquired diseases, such as children due to neurological disorders caused by the movement of the vocal organs is not coordinated as a child, because of the damage to the hearing caused by the hearing can not be correctly imitated, brain development disorders, etc. The second is caused by acquired diseases, such as children’s neurological diseases that cause the movement of the vocal organs to be uncoordinated, hearing damage that prevents them from hearing sounds and imitating them correctly, and brain developmental disorders that cause inability to pronounce sounds. When babies and young children are learning to speak, the language center of the brain and the vocal organs are not yet mature, coupled with the fact that children are easily affected by the surrounding language environment, such as the alternating use of Putonghua and dialect by their relatives around them, which is difficult for babies to accept, so it is understandable that their speech is a little bit poor. The child’s pronunciation and auditory function, language environment, intellectual development, pronunciation degree and other factors, most of the children in general after the age of 4 years will gradually complete the self-adjustment of the language system, can be serious and good and adults to carry out the exchange of dialog, some children have to be enrolled in school through the study to be fully corrected, these are normal phenomena. In addition, when the baby has the so-called “big tongue” symptom, the pronunciation problem can be improved through some voice training. Therefore, parents should not worry too much about their children’s unclear speech, and if the tongue tie is really a problem, whether to cut or not to cut, just rest assured to leave it to the doctor’s judgment!