Re: excessive drooling?

August 11, 2006

My oral and verbal apraxic son Tanner who has low tone in his face

almost never drooled...but my son Dakota who had birth injuries and

crushed facial nerves had lots of trouble with drooling. Drooling

is not a sign of apraxia -it could be developmental -or a sign of

oral motor dysfunction depending.

Below is an archive (of an archive, of an archive) on more -and with

tips:

Re: Speech therapies

Hi again,

When you wrote about

" He drool all the time. "

Wanted to add to my last message to you something else that may help

. At 6 I'm sure drooling is a social as well as oral motor

problem, because it's something that can be noticeable in a negative

way to others his age. Does his drooling appear to bother him,

embarrass him, frustrate him? Could his drooling " all the time " be

part of the reason he chooses to play alone? Fortunately either

way, drooling is another impairment that can be addressed through

appropriate speech therapies. Also...

could the drooling be related to the seizures? (see below)

My oldest son Dakota used to drool, but not all the time except as

an infant, and due to Early Intervention therapies including oral

motor therapies, his drooling was for the most part resolved before

3.

Oral motor therapy can address motor planning,

strengthening and/or sensory issues, as needed.

Below is an article I wrote with CHERAB and Speechville advisor Sara

Rosenfeld-, M.S., CCC-SLP

'Possible Oral Apraxia or Oral Motor Warning Signs'

http://www.cherab.org/information/speechlanguage/oralapraxia.html

And below, another article written by Sara

Rosenfeld-, M.S., CCC-SLP on oral motor speech therapy, and

then some archives about drooling that helped my son Dakota posted

to this grouplist:

Oral-Motor Speech Therapy

By Sara Rosenfeld-, M.S., CCC/SLP

Sandoval is like lots of kids with Down syndrome. She can talk

a blue streak, but few outside her immediate family can understand

what she is saying. And even they have difficulty sometimes. Like

many youngsters with low-tone muscle deficits, 's oral muscles

are not adequately developed to produce sounds clearly. But it

doesn't have to be that way. In most cases these children can be

taught to speak more clearly, but not with traditional speech

therapy alone.

Traditional therapy is based on a multi-sensory approach that deals

with the production of speech. In simple terms, the therapist shows

the child a ball and says " ball " , then the child repeats the word.

If hearing, vision and muscle tone are normal, this approach usually

works. But many children simply do not have adequate muscle tone in

the mouth for traditional speech therapy alone to be successful, and

they end up frustrated.

In contrast, oral-motor speech therapy is based on the premise that

normal oral structures and patterns are necessary for normal speech.

If the problem is poorly developed oral muscles, then the solution

is to strengthen and train these muscles. Plus, children enjoy the

oral-motor exercises so they don't fight therapy. They think they

are playing because the therapy uses a hierarchy of horns, straws,

and bubbles when actually they are learning to use their oral

muscles to produce speech sounds.

is nearly 5 years old, but her oral muscles are only developed

to the level of about a 9-month-old child. She's in pre-school and

has traditional speech therapy regularly. While this therapy is

improving her vocabulary, it is not helping her ability to make

herself understood. She's the perfect candidate for oral-motor

speech therapy, which has improved the speech clarity of hundreds of

low-tone children of all ages and ability levels. Then they move on

to traditional speech therapy, such as phonological processing, with

a higher degree of success.

Speech is an intensely associated group of oral-motor movements. For

example, take the aspect of tongue protrusion, which impedes clear

speech. Most people don't realize this results partly from a lack of

tongue-jaw dissociation, the ability of the tongue and jaw to move

independently. So naturally the treatment for a child with tongue

protrusion would be geared toward teaching these muscles to work

independently.

's plan includes a number of tactics to improve jaw-tongue

dissociation, tongue retraction and lip rounding as well as to

increase jaw stability. Based on evaluation of 's skills, the

therapist and parent were instructed to begin with bubble exercise

No. 5 out of eight to build jaw stability and develop lip rounding.

This involves teaching her to " hoo " silently or in a whisper while

blowing on an oval bubble wand held 1 inch in front of her mouth.

Because all children are different, this therapy approach is built

on a hierarchy whereby the child's oral-motor skills are evaluated,

and the treatment is individualized accordingly. For example, some

children have to begin on the very first horn in the 14-horn

hierarchy. All of the horns work on various muscle movements needed

to make specific sounds. The first horn begins work on lip closure

and is the easiest to blow. Others may start well into the

hierarchy, say No. 9, which addresses lip protrusion and tongue

retraction and is much more difficult to blow.

's plan began on horn No. 2 for lip closure. Before she could

move to No. 3 for lip rounding, she had to complete 25 repetitions

on No. 2.

Accomplishing this repetition is where homework comes in. The

parent/caregiver works at home with the child for 15 or 20 minutes

daily. The homework exercises, outlined in The HOMEWORK Book (used

in conjunction with the detailed therapist manual, Oral-Motor

Exercises for Speech Clarity), pave the way for rapid progress in

therapy sessions. They are critical to the success of the therapy.

And, they are empowering for the child and the parent or caregiver.

The task-analyzed steps are never too difficult. They are so

minuscule the child constantly moves forward, building on a history

of success and never getting frustrated.

For more information on Sara Rosenfeld-'s Oral-Motor Speech

Therapy, call Innovative Therapists International at (888) 529-2879.

http://www.speech-express.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=662 & sid=0c23fb2e394dec6c60b\

1b7a9c9724015

From: " kiddietalk " <kiddietalk@...>

Date: Mon Oct 13, 2003 10:07 pm

Subject: Re: excess saliva

Hi diapermom 2!

You don't say your child's age since some aspects may be

developmental, but based on your email name of diapermom -I guess

either your son is young has potty delays.

I do understand your son has saliva just sitting/pooling in the

mouth and he's either not swallowing often enough, which is

also part of what can happen when a child drools too even though

your son is not drooling, or his body is producing more saliva than

he really needs. Unfortunately the former (drooling) is yet another

one that I can relate to with my oldest son, and fortunately this

too did pass!

You first want to rule out there are no medical, physical etc

reasons for too much saliva in the mouth.

http://www.alsa-or.org/treatment/Saliva

http://www.technologyandlanguage.com/presentations/drooling/

http://www.duit.uwa.edu.au/web/inclusion/disability/saliva.html

There are medications (and probably nutritional interventions as

well!) to reduce saliva in the mouth if that is the reason.

http://www.alsa-or.org/treatment/Saliva

I also read there can be psychological triggers of too much saliva -

such as nervousness. So could be a number of reasons. Again

however you are the first to mention too much saliva here...without

the

drooling part.

In addition to discussing with your child's MD, as well as

specialists such as ENTs, which I highly recommend -perhaps some of

the strategies for droolers will work for your child in the meantime?

The following are two or three archived messages from about 2 years

ago. This never came up before either because it's not common for a

child to have lots of saliva in their mouth and not drool -or most

don't want to talk about it -so the archives are on drooling.

As far as drooling -Tanner never really went thought even

the 'normal' drooping stage -Dakota made up for that big time -but

has not drooled at all for years. Therapy deals with lots of stuff,

strategies help cover what therapy misses -this is yet another

example. Hope some of the following can help.

From: "

August 12, 2006