MUSCLE MOUTH

We develop and build the mouth and airway by exploring things with the mouth, moving the mouth, drinking, and creating sounds – and by intaking, chewing and swallowing food. Here are some ways to promote early exploration of the many muscles that promote speech and sound for communications. And – as your baby develops – each new sound and facial expression becomes a new way to further interact and explore the serve and return.

BLOWING RASPBERRIES

Babies get to babbling and raspberry blowing between 6 and 8 months. Yes – the vibrating lips, spitting tongue, “say it don’t spray it” mess. Over the next 12 months – raspberries progress to basic animal sounds to sticking out the tongue more, puffing cheeks, and blowing through a straw. All of these develop and coordinate the oral and speech pathways, and this is influenced by experiences.

Serve and return some funny lip, mouth, and tongue sounds and vibrations. If baby isn’t interested just yet, give it a go from time to time in the coming weeks. Sometimes these actions only last a week or two, as babies will move on from something they’ve mastered in search of the next challenge.

Here is a video of a dad teaching his 7 month old how to blow raspberries [YouTube, 2min]. His face probably looks like this…

DRINKING CUPS

Bringing a cup to the mouth to drink water takes some serious coordination. It involves the hand to face action, but also the mouthing of the cup, sealing around to drink, and swallowing the water with the mouth closed. Pediatricians recommend introducing an open top cup around the same time as food introduction. For more on introducing drinking cups, here is a short, well written article on the topic.

Try this: Expose them to a variety of cups, including letting them drink from yours. Start with just a small amount of water in it (mostly to limit the inevitable spills) and let them explore this trial and error. Help as needed or showcase it so they can mimic you.

We really like the cups from silipint for both adults and kids, especially since the kid cup comes as a cup, soft sippy, and straw cup – and can easily be used for 5 to 6 years. EzPz also makes an excellent, smaller cup.

FOOD VARIETY AND CHEWING

By the 6 month mark many babies show signs that they are ready to eat/explore solids. This includes showing interest in your food, the ability to bring the hands to the mouth, and preferably the ability to sit up without support or with light support at the hips.

Did you know that the throat and tongue muscles respond to and learn from food texture! As a child moves from puree to mash, thick and creamy, to lumpy and minced and beyond – the gag reflex settles and the mouth and throat muscles start working to process food without choking.

This is also a good time to start modeling the motions of chewing.

When they eat you can say “chew chew” and move your mouth and head up and down to exaggerate this motion. When done regularly, many kids can learn to effectively chew in 12-18months (yes, it’s learned). Learning to process food properly can reduce the risk of food related choking. We recommend all dads bone up on basic choking first aid. This is best done via a hands on course, however this video from CPR Kids is an excellent starting place. [YouTube, 6min 45sec]

Food can be an incredible part of relationship building. Put all the skills together and talk about the food, look at it, smell the food, play with the food, and get messy – it’s the only 3 years of their life where it’s generally acceptable to be a total pig – so play a little!

Note: Consult your physician about foods and consider adding new foods thoughtfully, as it’s hard to predict if the child will have an allergic reaction. My son was highly allergic to avocado (latex based) and corn (lectin, actually) for about 18 months. We followed an exposure plan to help his body work through and grow out of the allergies. Again, consult your physician if you notice abnormal reactions to new foods as you phase those in.

The New Science of the Mouth

It takes the complex coordination of over 100 muscles to produce and control speech. The fine control of those muscles create the hundreds of thousands of combinations needed to tune the volume, intensity, and inflections of speech as well as the non-language vocalizations – like whistles, smacks, pops, animal sounds, and that epic beat box routine to amp up baby.

Breaking it down, there are a dozen muscles that work together to move your mouth alone. There are 8 more that control your tongue. In the throat – there are over 50 pairs of muscles that are responsible for shaping air coming out and helping food properly go down. Rounding it out are the series of muscles of the stomach, ribs, and diaphragm that pump air flow.

Specifically, control of movements of the muscles in the mouth, the lips, tongue, jaw, teeth, and the hard and soft palates are called Oral-Motor Development.

Modern science is finding that early mouth experiences are changing the trajectory of how kids develop. Some of these environmental experiences – such as regular drinking from hard mouth sippy cups, to long term pacifier use, to excessive thumb sucking – are causing the shape of the upper roof of the mouth to not lower during development. When it stays high, it reduces the volume of the nasal and sinus cavity – which leads to increased congestion, more breathing through the mouth (which is not what months are actually designed for), early onset apnea, crowding of the teeth, and many other unintended issues.

The key here is the concept of DOSE and FREQUENCY. While some things can’t be avoided – sucking on something intensely for long durations very regularly vs a couple minutes here and there is the way to think about it. A good goal is to teach chewing to strengthen jaw, move past purees quickly, avoid hard mouthed sippys, and to fade pacifier use by 12 months, especially if high frequency. This is not meant to cause any stress, just a rule of thumb, knowing that life often gets in the way of “best practices”.

A Perspective on Language Development

This ability to form both clear and distinct sounds such that spoken sounds can be understood by others is called articulation. This comes from how we learn to produce sounds by controlling the mouth, lips, tongue, cheeks, throat, and controlling the breath to make those sounds with clarity.

FOR EXAMPLE – One of the hardest sounds to make are the voiced “th” (as in path) and the voiceless “th” (as in thank). These may take until 7 years of age for a child to master, and emerging research is pointing to this being tied to mouth and airway development – shape and strength.

If you are interested in learning about the development of sounds in a child (more later), this table from Kid Sense Australia gives a great overview.