The impact of tongue restriction on speech varies among individuals. Some children with a tongue tie extending to the tip may articulate well but might experience increased effort while speaking. Conversely, those with a less visible or posterior tie might exhibit speech delays or struggle with producing certain sounds like L, R, T, D, N, TH, SH, and Z.

Our ongoing research aims to assess the influence of tongue-tie on children's speech and evaluate the efficacy of the release procedure. Following a tongue-tie release conducted in our office, significant enhancements were observed across various areas (p < 0.01), including improved communication frustration, clarity of speech, speed of speech, fluency, articulation, speech delay, and clarity of speech.

Remarkably, many children with tongue-ties have started uttering new words mere hours or days post-procedure. For instance, one child vocalized four new words on the same day as the intervention, while another expanded their vocabulary from 10 words before the procedure to 39 within the following week. While immediate results are not guaranteed for every child, such remarkable improvements are frequently observed.

Children diagnosed with tongue-tie frequently encounter feeding challenges from an early age, manifesting as difficulties with breastfeeding or bottle-feeding. As they progress to solid foods, they may experience episodes of choking, gagging, or struggle with swallowing particular textures.

Throughout childhood, these feeding obstacles often persist, characterized by tendencies to consume small portions of food, exhibit slow eating habits, store food in their cheeks akin to chipmunks, and display selective preferences towards certain textures. While soft, mushy foods and meats typically pose the greatest difficulties, other food varieties can also present challenges. Notably, in our recent investigation, 84% of children grappling with feeding issues witnessed notable improvements.

When a child has tongue-tie, they might grind their teeth at night, snore, or have trouble breathing during sleep. Fixing the tongue-tie can help them sleep better because it lets the tongue rest on the roof of the mouth like it should, instead of falling back and blocking the airway. Sleep problems like these can make them wake up a lot, feel restless, wet the bed, wake up tired, and have trouble focusing in school, which can sometimes be mistaken for ADD or ADHD.

Since many things can add to this problem, like big tonsils, a narrow mouth, or tongue-tie, kids might have to see different doctors to fix it. Kids with tongue-tie often get many ear infections and might need ear tubes or have their tonsils and adenoids taken out. All of this can be made worse by breathing through the mouth a lot, which happens with tongue-tie. But fixing the tongue-tie can often make sleep much better after a simple procedure at the doctor's office.