Who do we help?

At TLC, we commonly see children with weakness in the the muscles of the mouth, face, and respiratory system. This can present as mild in children with hypotonia to more severe ones in children with cerebral palsy or with other neurological problems. The child may have unclear speech, limited tongue, lip, and jaw movements, “nasal” quality, breathiness, and drooling or poor control of saliva.

How can we help?

We will perform an oral motor examination to determine the movement of the lips, tongue, and jaw. We will also assess your child’s posture and breath control/support for speech. We will listen to your child and may use a formal articulation test to evaluate their speech. Depending on the results of the evaluation, we will work on improving the breath support and strengthening and increasing mouth, tongue, jaw and lip movement, improving articulation so that speech is clearer. Many children have benefited from oral motor therapy using TalkTools® incorporated with our NDT knowledge of posture and breathing.