Jaquelyn's Latest Trip To The Orthodontist

My sweet 9 year old is a tongue thruster. What is that you ask? That is when the child thrusts their tongue between their teeth every time they swallow. The resulting mouth is very similar to a thumb sucker. Her top and bottom teeth do not touch in the front....not by a long shot. Back in December, the orthodontist put something called a "tongue crib" into her mouth to discourage her from the thrusting of the tongue. Tuesday was her appointment to see how she is progressing. Not so well. It is helping mildly and the gap between top and bottom teeth has lessened slightly but not like the dr. would like. What is the next step you ask? I'm going to tell you even if you didn't ask...since it's my blog and all. The tongue crib was just some metal loops behind her front teeth to try to "corral" her tongue behind it.
Exhibit A:



















To try to really keep her tongue back there, the orthodontist clipped each loop and pointed them back towards her tongue. So that each time her tongue touches it, it gets poked. I can see how this would help since it must hurt quite a bit....or maybe I just think that because my daughter hasn't stopped whining about it since Tuesday. To the point that Tuesday night she said she wasn't going to eat until it came off. (Yeah, I was believing that...her next appointment isn't until September)
She has since gotten over that and is back to eating anything and everything we put in front of her. I am hoping this does the trick because the next step is a full metal mouth of braces and some sort of head/neck gear and/or rubber bands to pull her teeth towards each other. Not that I don't see her in braces eventually anyhow but that's besides the point.