This post is from Heather Rutka, MS CCC-SLP, a speech language pathologist helping children and their families in Brooklyn. She wrote to me after I posted about Birch going to sleep with a pacifier in his mouth. She explained about “bottle mouth”. It is a real issue and I vow to get Birch off of sippy cups and pacifiers this month. I asked Heather if she would write about it for this blog and she generously agreed to. Here it is:
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Use a Pacifier to Pacify and then Take it Out
If your child is one of those kids happily running around with a pacifier in his mouth at the playground and talking to others with a bottle dangling from his teeth, if your child sleeps with a pacifier, bottle or sippy cup in his mouth all night long than you need to read this. Remember it’s a pacifier. Use it to pacify and then take it out.
Pacifiers, bottles, and sippy cups are helpful tools that moms, dads, and caregivers use to soothe and feed their babes. However, they can sometimes lead to decreased speech intelligibility if they are used too long.
The mouth of the babe grows quickly. Some days, I could swear that when my 16- month -old son wakes up from his nap, he is bigger than when I put him down, just two hours earlier. The baby’s lips, tongue, palate, and jaw are in a constant state of growth. When foreign objects such as pacifiers, bottles, and/or sippy cups are left in the mouth (especially through those long nights, 8 to 11 hours, 7 days a week), the oral structures proceed to grow around them. This can lead to open bite posture, high palate, forward tongue posture, low tone, and other structural differences. These differences are what my colleagues and I like to call “bottle mouth” and they can later affect speech intelligibility.
In addition to structural differences, sucking on a pacifier, bottle, and/or sippy cup enhances the reverse swallow pattern (the tongue pushes forward to swallow) and inhibits the development of the adult swallow pattern (the tongue retracts to swallow). This can sometimes lead to tongue -thrusting and lisping.
I have met many moms whose seven and eight- year- olds have lisps, tongue thrusts, open bite posture, or who have difficulty breathing through his/her nose primarily due to misuse of the pacifier, bottle, or sippy cup. They claim that if they had known of these potential side effects back when their child was a toddler, they would have thrown away that pacifier or bottle sooner and they would have never have used that sippy cup.
It is recommended that parents aim to eliminate pacifier and bottle usage all together around their child’s first birthday. Give your child an open cup and/or a straw cup, both of which promote development of the adult swallow pattern and avoid sippy cups all together.
It should be noted that there are other causes for oral structural differences such as tongue thrusting and lisping and not all children will have these problems if he/she uses a pacifier, bottle, or sippy cup.
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Heather Rutka, MS CCC-SLP is a speech language pathologist helping children and their families in Brooklyn, NY. She received her Masters in speech and language pathology from Long Island University in Brooklyn and her undergrad at Queens College. She is also a mom to 16 –month- old Gus, whom never took a pacifier or a bottle (even when she wished he would). She lives with her husband and son in Carroll Gardens where straw drinking and open cup drinking are practiced daily. To reach Heather about this article or other questions you might have, email her at: heatherrutkaslp@gmail.com
Photo by Silvan Mahler