Chronic Oral Habits

Chronic oral habits such as thumb sucking, pacifier use, or teeth clenching/grinding, and abnormalities like an overly large tongue or weak mouth muscles can contribute to Orofacial Myofunctional disorders.

Thumb sucking is a natural self-soothing reflex for children. However, chronic, aggressive thumb sucking can have longer term consequences to their dental and speech pattern development. Thumb sucking moves the tongue out of its normal resting position (up and back) and forces it down and forward around the thumb. Over time, this becomes the tongue’s normal resting position which impacts speech sound production, mouth growth, and can push teeth outward in developing mouths.

While pacifier use can be good for babies, prolonged use can impact oral motor development which can cause later feeding problems and misalignment of teeth.

Just as with thumb sucking and pacifier use, sippy cups can affect tongue position. When choosing a closed cup, select one that has a spout that is pliable, short, and thin. This will allow the tongue to rest in the correct position. Straw cups are a great closed-cup alternative to traditional hard spout sippy cups.

Grinding involves moving the jaw with the teeth held together. This results in substantial visible wear and flattening of the teeth. Clenching is holding the teeth together and tightening the jaw muscles. Clenching generally results in less obvious wear to the teeth, but can still result in substantial muscular soreness, pain, and damage to the jaw joint.

One of the issues that oral habits can cause is mouth breathing. While there are times that we all breathe through our mouths, typically we breathe through our nose. The oral habits we have described above can cause mouth breathing, which in turn, causes a host of other problems.