Keeping Your Tongue On The Spot!

Hi there!

In an earlier post I talked about the spot, and briefly mentioned its importance for proper eating, drinking, and speaking.  In this post, I’m going to go into detail about why keeping your tongue on the spot is so important for these functions.

The spot is the alveolar ridge, that hard ridge or bump just behind your upper front gumline.  There are actually two alveolar ridges - the other is in your lower jaw - but we're only concerned with the upper one right now.  In a  normal tongue, the tip rests against the spot while the rest of the tongue is tucked up and back against the palate.  In a tongue tied person, keeping the tip of the tongue on the spot, and the rest of the tongue tucked up against the palate, can be very difficult - if not impossible.

Keeping the tongue on the spot is important for a number of reasons.  For one, proper positioning of the tongue helps prevents tongue thrust (also known as reverse swallow or immature swallow) in which the tongue pokes through the anterior incisors during swallowing, talking, and while the tongue is at rest.  Tongue thrust can adversely affect your teeth.  Many people with tongue thrust develop open bites in which their teeth don't touch either at the front, sides, or back.  There are many cases where individuals get braces to correct their open bite, get good results, and relapse once the braces are removed because the source of their tongue thrust was never corrected.  In my case, my tongue thrust was so bad I never achieved a closed bite even while wearing braces.

I should point out that tongue thrust is not always related to tongue tie.  Other factors that contribute to tongue thrust are thumb sucking, enlarged tonsils, hereditary factors, and a large tongue.  Also, although tongue thrust is common in infants and young children, and it is usually is resolved by age 8. See: Ankyloglossia on wikipedia

Another important reason for a person to be able to place the tongue on the spot is to aid in a normal eating and drinking pattern:

"...the food is moved back through the mouth with a front-to-back squeezing action, performed primarily by the tongue" [italics mine]

Another very important function of proper tongue-on-spot technique is speech.  We use our alveolar ridges to produce many sounds, consonants in particular such as /L/, /N/, /D/, and /T/.  The /S/ and /Z/ is produced by bringing the tips of our tongues up toward the alveolar - although without actually touching the ridge.  When we don't position our tongues properly during speech, speech defects can happen. 

Now, there's some debate as to whether or not a tongue tie causes speech problems:

Read an article here from The American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association's position on ankyloglossia and whether or not lingual frenectomy is necessary.  Note, the author admits there is little literature on speech disorders and ankyloglossia.  Mayhaps, some more research is needed?  They also acknowledge that tongue-tie can lead to dentition problems.  This is important because the speech therapist I consulted with at her private practice did not seem to understand this (See my 6/3/12 post titled "Thhpeech Therapy").

In my own case, most people who knew me did not think I had a serious speech defect aside from a slight lisp.  I am willing to acknowledge that there are tongue-tied people out there without serious speech issues.  However, I speak from years of personal experience when I say having a tongue tie, and not being able to keep my tongue on the spot, affected my speech.  If I spoke too quickly my enunciation became less clear - like I had a "lazy" tongue - I found myself overcompensating by opening my mouth wider, pursing my lips more, and jutting my jaw out further.  These overcompensations take a toll on your appearance (See my 6/6/12 post)... and your teeth.

Because I could not keep my tongue on the spot, I dentalized my consonants.  When I made an /L/ sound, for example, I pressed my tongue against my anterior incisors (my top front teeth).  Doesn't sound so bad, right?  Well, all that dentalizing - I dentalized my speech all day - kept my open bite from closing.  Even a little bit of pressure from the tongue can affect your teeth.  In fact, the relationship between tongue thrust and malocclusions has been researched quite a bit:

"It has been shown that the incidence of tongue thrusting is higher than normal in subjects with open bite or overjet malocclusions...  Many research studies have pointed out that a significant percentage of relapse after orthodontic treatment might be related to orofacial muscle imbalance and deviated swallowing [italics mine] (p. 74)" in Effect of Tongue Thrust Swallowing on Position of Anterior Teeth

In addition to dentition and orthodontic concerns, not being comfortable with my speech made me very self conscious.  I work in a field that requires me to do a lot of face-to-face speaking.  I didn't want people to focus on how I spoke instead of what I was saying.  Also, I felt my lisp undermined the sense of authority I sometimes had to convey.  Even if the majority of these things are subjective, they still had an effect on me.

Now, the last aspect of tongue-on-the-spot functioning that I'm going to talk about is SO important, and so involved, it's going to need it's own post but I'm willing to give you a bit of  preview:

Nasal Breathing

BTW, if you still don't quite believe that it's important for your tongue to be on the spot, here's a children's book written to encourage children to keep their tongue in its proper place (notice the customer review!): Tucker The Tongue Finds His Spot

Happy trails!

-KP