Is speech therapy for tongue-tie something your child may need?
Does your child have difficulty forming certain sounds when they speak?
Do they seem to spill more often when eating or struggle with certain tongue movements?
Or does their tongue look heart-shaped when they stick it out?
If so, you may be wondering whether tongue-tie could be affecting their speech, feeding, or oral development.
Tongue-tie, also known as ankyloglossia, happens when the tissue under the tongue is unusually short or tight.
This can limit how freely the tongue moves and may make certain speech sounds, eating skills, or oral movements more difficult.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what tongue-tie is, what may cause it, and how to tell if your child may have one.
We’ll also explore how tongue-tie can affect speech and how speech therapy can help support clearer, more confident communication over time.
What Is Tongue-Tie?
Tongue-tie might sound like something from a cartoon, but it’s a real diagnosis.
And it has nothing to do with getting hung up on certain words.
It’s related to something called your lingual frenulum.
This is a band of tissue that connects your tongue to the bottom of your mouth.
If you open your mouth and lift up your tongue, you can probably see yours in a mirror.
Most people have them, and it’s normal.
However, with tongue-tie, the lingual frenulum is unusually short or thick.
This limits the tongue’s range of motion.
There’s another frenulum connecting your upper or lower lip to the inside of your mouth above your teeth.
This can sometimes be too short or too thick as well.
It’s called a lip-tie.
Tongue-tie can sometimes affect feeding, oral movement, and speech sound production, depending on how much it restricts tongue movement.
Lip-tie may also affect oral function in some cases, but each child should be evaluated individually to understand whether it is contributing to feeding, speech, or oral development concerns.
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What Causes Tongue-Tie at Birth?
Tongue-tie happens when the lingual frenulum remains too short, tight, or thick, limiting how freely the tongue can move.
During development before birth, the lingual frenulum typically separates enough to allow the tongue to move freely.
When this does not happen fully, a baby may be born with tongue-tie.
The exact cause is not always known, but genetics may play a role.
Tongue-tie can sometimes run in families.
How to Tell if Your Child Has Tongue-Tie
Everyone has a lingual frenulum.
This is normal.
The difference in tongue-tie is that it’s unusually short or thick.
But how can you tell that?
Signs in infants may include:
- Trouble latching during breastfeeding
- Clicking sounds when breastfeeding
- Trouble lifting their tongue, moving it side to side, or sticking it out
- A heart-shaped tongue when sticking it out
Signs in older children may include:
- Differences in speech patterns
- Difficulty eating and swallowing
- Speech and language developmental delays
- Difficulty licking their lips or an ice cream cone
- Difficulty touching their back teeth with their tongue
Now, you may not think of it this way, but your tongue plays an important role in oral hygiene.
It helps you remove food stuck in your cheeks or between your teeth.
With a tongue-tie, that’s more difficult.
As a result, it can affect your child’s oral hygiene as well.
How Can Tongue-Tie Affect Speech?
When it comes to producing speech sounds, you use your lips, teeth, jaws, and, of course, your tongue, among others.
These are called your articulators.
You use these to articulate your speech.
However, when one or more of these articulators is different, it can contribute to what we call an articulation disorder.
In some children, restricted tongue movement may make it harder to produce certain sounds that rely on precise tongue placement.
This includes ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘s’, ‘th’, and ‘z’.
However, most children have some difficulty producing certain sounds when they’re first learning to speak. That on its own is not always cause for concern.
Because speech sound development varies by age, a speech-language pathologist can help determine whether your child’s sound errors are developmentally typical or related to restricted tongue movement.
If your child seems to be struggling particularly with tongue-based sounds, it may be worth looking for the signs of tongue-tie mentioned above.
How Can Speech Therapy Supports Children With Tongue-Tie?
If your child has a tongue-tie, pediatric speech therapy can help support clearer speech, oral motor skills, and communication confidence.
Your first appointment with your pediatric speech therapist will be longer.
During this session, your speech therapist will work to build a detailed health history of your child.
This includes things like:
- Your primary concern
- When you first noticed it
- Any other diagnoses your child may have
- Past surgeries or other medical interventions
- And more
From there, they’ll observe your child’s tongue movement, speech patterns, and oral motor skills. If there are signs of tongue-tie, they may also recommend follow-up with your child’s pediatrician, dentist, ENT, or another appropriate medical provider.
Once they’ve gathered this information, they can help determine whether tongue-tie, another speech-language condition, or multiple factors may be contributing to your child’s speech differences.
From there, your child’s treatment plan may include exercises to help them produce the speech sounds they need.
For younger children, early intervention speech therapy can be especially helpful because it supports speech and feeding-related skills while communication is still developing.
Your speech therapist may also use targeted exercises to support your child’s tongue movement, oral coordination, and speech sound production.
This may include orofacial myofunctional therapy, which focuses on tongue posture, oral movement patterns, swallowing patterns, and related oral function.
This may also be helpful when children have related oral movement patterns, such as tongue thrust, which can affect speech clarity, swallowing, or tongue placement.
In some cases, children with tongue-tie may be referred for a procedure to release the frenulum.
This may be called a frenotomy, frenectomy, or frenuloplasty, depending on the type of procedure and the child’s needs.
These procedures are performed by trained medical or dental providers, such as a pediatrician, ENT, pediatric dentist, or oral surgeon.
However, not every tongue-tie requires surgery.
The decision should be based on your child’s symptoms, feeding or speech concerns, tongue mobility, and guidance from the appropriate medical professionals.
Some children may still need speech therapy after a release procedure, especially if they have already developed compensatory speech or oral movement patterns.
The goal of speech therapy for tongue-tie is to help your child build their strengths and their self-esteem.
That way, they have the skills they need to communicate with confidence.
Helping Your Child Build Clearer, More Confident Speech
Tongue-tie can affect more than how your child moves their tongue — it may also impact feeding, swallowing, speech clarity, and confidence.
Recognizing the signs early and seeking support can help you better understand whether tongue-tie is contributing to your child’s communication challenges.
Speech therapy can provide individualized strategies to support clearer speech, stronger oral motor skills, and more confident communication over time.
Whether your child needs therapy on its own or support before or after a tongue-tie release procedure, the right care can make a meaningful difference.
At Anywhere Speech and Language Therapy, we provide personalized online speech therapy for families across many states within the U.S., making expert support accessible wherever you are.
You can also learn more about how online speech therapy works before getting started.
Our speech-language pathologists work with families to create personalized plans that support each child’s speech, oral motor, and communication needs.
If your child has a tongue-tie or you’re concerned about their speech, oral motor skills, or communication development, schedule an evaluation today and take the first step toward helping them communicate with clarity and confidence.
