A significant number of parents find that their child with cleft palate still has trouble speaking clearly after cleft palate surgery. What is the reason for this? First, many children are treated surgically at an older age. Many hospitals in China still recommend surgery to repair cleft palate when the child is around 3 years old. This is when the child has already learned to speak and formed abnormal pronunciation habits in the case of the palate deformity. So even after surgery to correct the deformity, the child still adopts an abnormal method of pronunciation, so how can he or she speak clearly? At the North American Cleft Lip and Palate Conference in 2008, experts agreed that completing cleft palate repair surgery before the child learns to pronounce is very beneficial to improve post-surgery speech function. The Cleft Lip and Palate Treatment Center of Guangzhou Children’s Hospital has started the surgical repair of cleft palate at 5-9 months in 1996, and the number of children treated by our hospital who have their speech reviewed after 2~3 years old and speak normally can be said to be quite a few. Second, there is a perfect restoration of the anatomy and function of the soft palate muscles at the time of cleft palate surgery. In children with cleft palate, the soft palate muscles are disconnected from side to side, resulting in incomplete palatopharyngeal closure. The position and structure of the fine muscles need to be carefully reconstructed during surgery in order to obtain normal, fine function of the soft palate. The most important of these is the reconstruction of the palatal sail raphe muscle ring, as shown below. An early and well established expert in the reconstruction of the palatal raphe was Dr. Brian Sommerlad of Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in the United Kingdom. In China, this type of surgery has also been attempted in recent years. Since 2009, the Cleft Lip and Palate Treatment Center of Guangzhou Children’s Hospital has been fully in line with foreign treatment, using an operating microscope to perform this surgery. After the surgery, there are more children with normal palatopharyngeal closure function tests than before.