If your child struggles with mouth breathing, restless sleep, or crowded teeth, it can feel hard to know where to start.

Many parents are told to “wait and see” but these early signs often point to underlying muscle dysfunctions that can impact your child’s development over time.

Changes in swallowing pattern can be a result of compensation mechanisms that often begin early in life (Maspero, et al. 2014). Factors affecting these swallowing changes can include learning to swallow around a bottle teat, swallowing with a dummy or a sucked thumb.

Sleep apnoea, or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common breathing disorder which is characterised by a complete cessation of breathing during sleep for a period of time before breathing restarts again. It is usually caused by an obstruction in the airway when the muscles of the throat, soft palate and tongue relax during sleep. Although sleep apnoea does not usually cause death, if it is not well managed it can contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and increased risk of accidents due to daytime sleepiness (Rueda, et al., 2020).