Monday, June 1, 2009

Look what he can do now!!

 
It is a little hard to see in this picture,yea I know what the heck is this a picture of, right. Well this is Austin's mouth/tongue. Right above his bottom teeth is a "Short Frenulum" which caused him to be tongue tied. Austin is now 11 years old. He started speech therapy at his school in 2nd grade, 2 times a week. His progress was slow. I consulted the speech therapist where I work, Kelly (love ya, mean it, your the best) and she wanted to work with him for a while. In a few short weeks she mentioned he was "tongue tied" and if he got his tongue clipped it might help. I looked into it and figured why not, it could only help and not make things worse. In this picture you can see the the short frenulm keeps his tongue from raising up any higher, and he is unable to stick his tongue out all the way.
 
He is actually excited about having this done, especially if it helps him talk more clearly, he is obviously nervous and a little scared it is going to hurt.
 
In this picture this is the highest he can stick it up in his mouth, and it cause the tongue to puff up in the back.
 
This is a happy camper after the procedure. The Dr did the clipping in his office and a matter of minutes, numbed it first, the snip with the scissors. I was so proud of him! Here he is able to touch his up to the roof of his mouth. Something he could never do before and I had no idea he couldn't do this. His brother asked him "dude how did you get peanut butter off the roof of your mouth before" he answered " with my finger"
 
Here he can stick up for the first time.

 
And here sticking it out and down. He was so excited, all the way home in the car he played, moving his tongue around. He said he was so happy & excited that he could have ran a mile, no 3 miles.
Everyday he gets alittle better, practicing his words and his tongue exercises.
It's a shame that he spent so many years in therapy before and no one noticed his tongue before. Now all that matters is that Kelly discovered it, made a great recommendation and he can only get better from here.
Every couple of days he will say, "hey mom, look what I can do now"


Posted by Picasa

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aw...Yay for Austin! :)