Buddy

Yes, as long as the other kids are all needing changes in their diets/lives...why should we leave out Buddy lol! The long of it in short story form: When we went to the dentist last time we found out that Buddy has "tongue thrust" problem. We were recommended to put him in Myofunctional Therapy. After pondering that for 2 months we have decided to get him started on that today. We had a 1 hour initial assessment. Wow, I had no idea about speech/language issues or swallowing issues, etc. Buddy met the classic symptoms for "tongue thrust" problems. Since I had no idea about these things and am finding they are pretty common, I thought I would attempt to share this with you, without embarrassing my son in the mean time.

Before you read on, swallow. Notice where your tongue goes. It is supposed to press against the top of your mouth and not against your teeth. Well, Buddy's tongue doesn't even TOUCH the top of his mouth when he swallows, it only pushes forward against his teeth. That is leading to spaces between his teeth and a deformity with the roof of his mouth that is affecting his breathing and will only increase if not corrected. When a person swallows the food is supposed to go over the tongue, the soft palate at the back of the roof of the mouth is supposed to raise up and the uvala (whatever that sticky down thing is at the back of your throat ) is supposed to move backwards to close off the nasal passage while eating/drinking. Buddy's doesn't even move. That makes is much harder to swallow. In fact, he just puts food in and it goes right down his throat - especially liquids.

Here is the kicker...Buddy is an EXTREMELY picky eater. We found out today that kids with this problem are picky eaters because they simply cannot swallow many textures of food due to the way their mouth is not working properly. We had decided early on that the battle to get him to eat was not worth it. I am now VERY glad that we did not make that a battle because it was far more than a strong will...it is actually a structural problem with swallowing. He has taken a lot of grief over this for the years (and won't even go to camp in the summer due to food issues). We (and amazingly he is too) are very excited that he supposedly will be able to eat more foods soon!

Finally, when one's tongue and mouth is not working properly one does not enunciate as well as one should. We have always complained to Buddy that he is a mumbler. Soon, he should not be mumbling:)

So, for the next 14 - 18 weeks we get to drive to the next down over every week and have him do 30 minutes of swallowing (and other things) therapy. After that will be every 3 weeks, 6 weeks, etc until at the end of a year he will hopefully be cured.

Because life ALWAYS throws us curve balls and every time we think we are treading water something else happens to dunk us again:) It is all good, and it makes me trust and totally rely on God because I certainly can't do any of this in my own power.