Tongue thrust in 14 year old

amother

↑ NeonYellow ↓

Thu, Nov 21 2024, 9:45 pm

amother OP wrote:

Can someone enlighten me if this airway orthodontics thing is just a holistic kind of thing or when is it really necessary? Never heard about this.
Am I wasting money by sticking with a traditional orthodontist?

Honestly the reason I recommended it is because you said you were looking for a device and airway orthodontist know about devices that help with tongue posture.

Whether traditional orthodontics is a waste of money or not is kind of a rabbit hole and I wasn't intending to lead you down it. But the short answer is yes, especially in cases like your son's.

amother

↑ NeonYellow ↓

Thu, Nov 21 2024, 9:47 pm

amother OP wrote:

Who said? I had a tongue thrust and don't have a recessed chin

It's not the only cause but it's probably contributing. His jaws are underdeveloped so his tongue doesn't have space in his mouth. Recessed lower jaw == underdeveloped lower jaw. It also means his tongue is placed slightly further back in his mouth which places him at risk for obstructive apnea. He's already a mouth breather right?

When looking at a profile of yourself, is your chin perfectly aligned with your lower lip or slightly back?

mathbrain ↓

Fri, Nov 22 2024, 2:17 pm

I had a tongue thrust. My teeth before braces looked like I sucked my thumb. I went to speech therapy in middle school, but it didn’t help. Got braces when I was 13/14, my teeth are straight. Tongue thrust fixed itself when my teeth were fixed. And the braces didn’t let my tongue come out.

I had 4 teeth removed when I got braces. They terrified me that if I don’t wear my retainers, and with my tongue being too big for my mouth, my teeth will shift back to where it was, and I’ll have huge spaces.

Got my braces off 20 years ago. My teeth are BH fine. Haven’t worn my retainers in 15 years I’d say.

My son has similar issues now. I took him for 4-5 sessions a few years ago. Also didn’t help (we stopped due to the lovely COVID-19 outbreak) He’ll get braces shortly, and that’s that.

amother

↑ OP

Fri, Nov 22 2024, 2:25 pm

mathbrain wrote:

I just don't want to spend thousands and then have his teeth shift right back if I don't "address the tongue thrust"...

amother

↑ NeonYellow ↓

Fri, Nov 22 2024, 2:27 pm

mathbrain wrote:

Ok but removing teeth to make room for others just makes your jaws and airway even smaller 😞

↑ mathbrain ↓

Fri, Nov 22 2024, 3:18 pm

amother NeonYellow wrote:

Ok but removing teeth to make room for others just makes your jaws and airway even smaller 😞

Doesn’t actually make the jaw and airway smaller. Jaw and airway stay the same size. I don’t have an airway issue. I do have TMD/TMJ, but I think it’s unrelated.

Just my personal experience, where speech therapy for tongue thrust didn’t work for me, and braces fixed my issues. I’d think if I still had a problem, it would’ve showed up in the last 20 years since.

I do have an issue that my tongue is too large for my mouth. But my tongue doesn’t ever hand out anymore. And with braces, my tongue was forced into using proper resting position by default. Something my speech therapist wasn’t able to do. now I’m just used to that I guess.

Now, if speech therapy could’ve made my mouth bigger…
But it can’t
And my palate is not high or anything
And I’m not a candidate for any kind of expansion or anything. My mouth was just created too small for all the teeth and tongue I got, according to the second and third and even 4th opinion my mother took me to, b4 she bawled and allowed the dentist to pull 4 perfectly healthy teeth.

amother

↑ NeonYellow ↓

Fri, Nov 22 2024, 3:24 pm

mathbrain wrote:

Teeth are place holders in the jaw. Removing teeth makes the jaw shrink.
TMJ pain is absolutely related to jaw and airway issues. If you top and bottom teeth don't match up the way they're supposed to that will put a tremendous about of strain on the tmj joints and the trigeminal nerve.
Also, tmj pain is often resulting from bruxism. Bruxism is an attemtp/ compensation by the autonomic nervous system to keep the airway open during sleep when it senses it's not getting enough oxygen due to obstruction.
There's no such thing as a tongue too big for the mouth, only a mouth that wasn't allowed to grow big enough to make room for the tongue.
If all those orthodontists were traditional, it's no wonder they all recommended the same thing.
Traditional orthodontics is stuck in the dark ages lol.
An airway orthodontist can possibly still help you if this is something you want to address.

↑ mathbrain ↓

Sat, Nov 23 2024, 10:18 pm

amother NeonYellow wrote:

For all these concerns, I didn’t get braces until I was finished growing, and we knew my jaw wasn’t going to expand more. My mouth was super overcrowded. I find it hard to say that of the 4 specialists we went to, none of them thought that pulling 4 teeth would cause my jaw to shrink.
I’ve been to a few specialists recently for my jaw issues, as it’s gotten a bit worse.
Went to the dentist and my mouth literally got locked into an open position. Was kinda freaky.
My main issue is that I clench and grind my teeth. I know I do that. When I’m stressed, that’s just what I do. Clench jaw and entire body.
I recently started wearing a night guard for both issues (clench and grind). It’s a game
Changer.

amother

↑ NeonYellow

Sat, Nov 23 2024, 10:27 pm

mathbrain wrote:

Clenching and grinding is a sign your airway is compromised.

honey36 ↓

Sat, Nov 23 2024, 11:50 pm

OP, it's hard to give advice without seeing your son, but I'm my experience, no, traditional orthodontics is not a waste of time. but I would ask the Ortho if he thinks your son has a narrow palate, in which case expansion is much preferable over tooth extraction. Plenty of traditional orthos are happy to do expansion, not just the airway informed ones. It's possible once his palate is expanded, he will stop thrusting. If not, you can do the speech therapy after. Just make sure in the interim he wears his retainers religiously so nothing moves.

↑ honey36

Sat, Nov 23 2024, 11:54 pm

amother NeonYellow wrote:

Ok but removing teeth to make room for others just makes your jaws and airway even smaller 😞

Are you an orthodontist?
Sometimes there is only so much a jaw can be expanded before it starts messing with a person's profile, in which case teeth may need to be extracted. I'm also against extracting teeth, but I'm not sure how you can get around this issue.