Already 3 years old, Guoguo, speech lisp, especially the curled tongue, go to the children’s hospital examination found that Guoguo’s tongue tie is too short, resulting in Guoguo pronunciation is not good, at this time, need to do a small surgery to correct, usually more practice in life, the speech will be fine in the future! What is tongue tie? There will be a tie under the baby’s tongue and between the gums and the upper lip. There is a strip of tissue under the tongue that connects to the bottom of the mouth, and this thin strip of tissue is the tongue tie. This thin strip of tissue is the tongue tie. This tie is used to control the flexibility of the tongue. The function of the tongue tie is to assist the tongue in mixing food and saliva to aid digestion and swallowing, and to help the tongue move up and down so that it can speak clearly. A normal tongue tie allows the tongue to extend flexibly out of the mouth, to lick to the middle of the mouth, or to curl up to the upper front teeth. However, if the tongue tie is too short, it will make it difficult for the tongue to extend forward and lift upward. How to tell if your baby’s tongue tie is too short? 1. If your baby’s tongue crosses the incisors by less than 2mm when he/she stretches his/her tongue forward, or if his/her tongue is in a W-shape or heart-shape, as shown in the picture below, the tongue tie is too short. 2. When the baby’s tongue is lifted upward, it cannot reach the upper alveolar teeth, or it is in a V-shape, as shown in the picture below, the tongue tie is too short. 3, newborn babies are easy to distinguish, can not let their tongue or lift the tongue, you can look at the appearance, if the tongue tie are to the tip of the tongue, suggesting that the tongue tie is short, as shown in the figure below is a short tongue tie. What are the effects of short tongue tie? 1, affect the baby to eat milk tongue tie is too short the brunt of the impact of course is the baby to eat milk, because the baby will eat milk tongue will be outward, upward lift, the hard palate and the mother’s nipple separated, through the extrusion to suckle milk. If the tongue tie is too short, the baby’s tongue can’t stretch out, can’t go up, hard to rely on the back of the tongue and the hard palate to squeeze the mother’s nipple, the baby can’t eat the milk not to mention that, the mother will also be “bitten” pain. Mom nipple pain will affect milk secretion, the baby can not suck effectively, the milk is less and less, and finally may give up breast milk! 2, affect the pronunciation If the short tongue tie is more serious, the baby’s tongue up will be very difficult, because the short tongue tie limits the range of motion of the tongue. At this point, babies may not be able to pronounce sounds that require the tongue to be cocked up near the palate, such as zh, ch, sh, r, and so on. Note: For babies who are learning to speak, if this situation occurs, after excluding other speech disorders, you can consider the problem of a short lower tongue tie. 3, affect the tongue to clean the teeth tongue has the function of cleaning the tongue and oral debris, we may all have this habit, when the teeth stick to the leaves, this time will use the tongue lips together to cooperate, clean up the teeth on the colorful leaves, or when the plugged teeth, will suck the food debris in the teeth and so on. If the baby’s tongue is too short, can not be outward, upward stretching, will have some impact on these actions, long-term, may lead to periodontitis and so on. 4.How to deal with short tongue tie? Should it be cut off? The timing of the surgery is still controversial. For newborn babies, some doctors recommend cutting the tongue tie as soon as it is found, while some doctors also recommend continued observation to see if the tongue tie can naturally recede towards the root. Our recommendation: If your baby is born with a short tongue tie that is interfering with breastfeeding, consult your doctor to see if it needs to be treated. If it does not affect breastfeeding, you can continue to observe. Generally speaking, after 5 months of life, with the eruption of milk teeth, the attachment site of the tongue tie will gradually move towards the bottom of the mouth, and become thinner and looser. Under normal circumstances, the tip of the tongue gradually moves away from the tie after the baby is 2 years old. It is only in a few cases of abnormal development where the tongue tie does not retract that short tongue ties occur. Therefore, a baby with a short tongue tie should not be considered abnormal and is best observed after 2 years of age. If the baby after 2 years of age, the baby’s speech is not clear, confirmed to be caused by the short tongue tie, can be implemented as soon as possible to extend the surgery, at this time to correct the surgery, the baby pronunciation training has no effect. Warm tips: 1, tongue tie is too short to affect only the baby’s pronunciation, with the opening of the mouth to speak sooner or later does not matter. Therefore, the tongue tie cut or not cut, do not affect the baby’s speech sooner or later. 2, tongue tie cut just for the correction of pronunciation to provide the functional conditions, not after the tongue tie cut off, the baby lisp performance will be immediately corrected, but also to parents continue to train and correct pronunciation to gradually improve.