Myofunctional Spot

12/14/2025

Therapy should feel like play but every activity has a purpose.
Blowing up a balloon requires coordinated breath support, lip closure, and tongue strength. For toddlers, these play-based activities help build the oral motor foundation needed for feeding, speech clarity, and proper oral rest posture, all while keeping sessions fun and engaging.

12/14/2025

Therapy should feel like play but every activity has a purpose.

Blowing up a balloon requires coordinated breath support, lip closure, and tongue strength. For toddlers, these play-based activities help build the oral motor foundation needed for feeding, speech clarity, and proper oral rest posture, all while keeping sessions fun and engaging.

This cutie is doing amazing!

12/14/2025

12/12/2025

Our team communicates around the clock to provide the concierge level care for the wonderful families that we serve.

Tonight we finally had a moment to connect all together without charts, texts, or treatment plans - just our small Myofunctional Spot family - to show my deep appreciation and celebrate another wonderful year together!! 💫🍾🍸 LOVE this team!! 🩵

I’m endlessly grateful for the dedication and loyalty that Gabby, Michelle, and Jose bring to Myofunctional Spot every single day. Their commitment and passion are truly the heart of this practice.

Beyond grateful for an amazing 2025, wishing Gabby a wonderful maternity leave and looking forward to an incredible 2026 together as we continue to serve the families and providers who put their trust in us every day. Also a huge thank you for the beautiful flowers 💐

12/11/2025

Tongue Thrust is not a habit. It is a disordered swallow pattern.

There is no such thing as a “mild” tongue thrust.

You either have:
✅ a mature, functional swallow
or
❌ an immature, compensatory swallow

Anything else is a myth.

A true tongue thrust is a neuromuscular pattern where the tongue is unable to elevate, stabilize, and seal against the palate during swallow. That failure of function is what drives force into the teeth, destabilizes orthodontic work, alters facial growth, and disrupts airway support.

🛑 Treating the teeth alone never fixes the pattern.
🛑 Passive Oral Appliances are bandaids

🔎 We routinely identify:

• Tongue tie and lip tie restrictions
• Low resting tongue posture
• Chronic oral breathing
• Upper airway obstruction
• Inability to generate adequate intraoral pressure

If the tongue cannot elevate and seal, the body will compensate forward every single time. That is physiology, not willpower.

✨ Speech Pathologists (SLPs) trained in orofacial myofunctional therapy are essential in treating and resolving tongue thrust.
We are retraining a motor pattern, not coaching a “habit.”

Therapy targets:
• Resting tongue posture
• Oral Pharyngeal Swallow mechanics
• Functional lingual strength and endurance
• Lip and jaw stabilization
• Airway driven compensations

Until the neuromuscular system is retrained, orthodontic relapse, TMJ loading, speech distortions, and airway strain will persist.

Tongue thrust is not cosmetic.
It is functional, neurological, and structural. It requires more than just a traditional speech therapy approach.

📍 Myofunctional Spot
📩 Link in bio for expert evaluation

12/09/2025

💫 🩵

12/08/2025

12/05/2025

Nothing makes our day quite like updates from our past families. 🩵🩵🩵

This beautiful little one came to us as an infant, and seeing her thriving and full of joy now is the greatest reminder of why we do what we do.

To all the families who stay in touch, send photos, and share your milestones — thank you. Your messages mean more than you know, and it is truly an honor to be a small part of your story. ✨

We are so grateful for you. 💛

(Text and photo shared with consent)

12/03/2025

🌟 Myofunctional Therapy with Children is Family Therapy 🌟
One of the most important parts of the work we do at Myofunctional Spot is parent and family involvement. Myofunctional Therapy is never something that happens “to a child” once a week for 30 minutes. It’s a collaborative, family-centered approach ❤️

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 When parents participate, outcomes skyrocket.
We involve caregivers in every single session, not just to teach the exercises, but to help them understand why these patterns matter and how they develop. Many of the underlying anatomical/structural issues that we are addressing tend to run in families. More often than not, parents realize that they can benefit from the same work too.

💪 There is no magic wand.
As clinicians, we guide, coach, build, sequence and facilitate the individual treatment plan for each child. We provide families with all of the tools, supplies, videos, and support you need…
But we cannot be in your home doing the exercises for you. Just like any muscle-based or functional therapy, change requires repetition, consistency, and engagement.

⏱️ 15 minutes each night = long-term results.
Families who commit to a few minutes of guided activities between visits make the fastest and most stable progress. This is where true re-patterning happens - at home, in real life, with your support.

✨ When you join our therapy programs, you’re not just enrolling your child. You’re enrolling as a family. And that’s what makes all the difference.

If you’re ready to help your child build healthy, functional habits that last a lifetime and prevent further functional issues, we’re here to walk that journey with you every step of the way.

11/25/2025

The evidence is clear.

Correcting structure alone cannot correct a functional problem. This article from LightScalpel is an excellent resource for parents & providers (link in comments).

The most common question we get is whether expansion or a tongue tie release alone can resolve airway issues. The short answer is no. Expansion is valuable. Releases are valuable. But neither one can retrain the orofacial muscles or correct the dysfunctional patterns that created the problem in the first place.

Most airway and facial growth issues begin with dysfunction. A high or narrow palate is often caused by low tongue posture and an incorrect swallow. When the tongue cannot elevate and stabilize properly, the palate doesn’t expand naturally. This is why structural expansion alone is never the full solution.

A release without pre and post myofunctional therapy is incomplete. Expansion without functional retraining is incomplete. A treatment plan that does not include a significant period of functional therapy is incomplete. This applies to infants, children, teens, and adults. Structure can change at any age, but proper function must always be trained.

Current research agrees that before a frenectomy, a functional evaluation is necessary to prepare the tongue, lips, and airway muscles for new mobility. After a release, therapy is required to restore strength, coordination, oral rest posture, nasal breathing, and neuromuscular repatterning of the swallow. Surgery and appliances alone cannot do this.

SLPs are trained and licensed to evaluate and treat swallowing. Swallowing involves tongue elevation, tongue base retraction, lip seal, pressure generation, and coordinating 30+ muscles. Correcting the swallow is the core of successful expansion, airway improvement, and post-release stability.

Without repatterning the swallow and restoring correct tongue posture, the same dysfunctional patterns continue and work against expansion, contribute to relapse, and keep symptoms unresolved.

A truly evidence-based airway plan treats both structure and function. Expansion is one part. Release is one part.

Function is the foundation that makes every structural change stable.