Adults Have Many Options Today to Get Straighter Teeth

If your child talks with a slight lisp and you think it's because of how their adult teeth are coming into the mouth, there are a few professionals that can give you advice and treatment for the situation. Your child's speech will change as they age and develop and as they lose teeth and their oral structure changes over time. There are many problems that could be causing the lisp. Here are a few things you want to look into.

Speech Therapist

A speech therapist will listen to your child, give their speech an assessment, and then determine what the cause is for the lisp. You may find out that your child is having a difficult time with the strength of their tongue or the placement of their tongue when they speak, and this is why it sounds like they have a lisp or difficulty speaking.

The therapist may recommend training for an extended period of time to correct the problem. While the child loses teeth or new teeth come in, the therapy may stop, be delayed or need to be changed to suit the child.

Orthodontist

An orthodontist can examine the child's mouth to see if there are any bone problems that are causing the teeth to separate or be misaligned and assess if the child is old enough for braces. Pushing the teeth together and aligning them properly may be enough to stop the lisp and can stop the tongue from landing where it doesn't need to be.

 The braces can also help improve the oral health by preventing bacteria from getting between the spaced teeth and by protecting the gum tissue. See if the orthodontist thinks braces can help stop your child from having a lisp and if the braces are going to help with other structural problems.

If the lisp isn't the only problem your child has with their speech, the other problem could be that they are having a hard time hearing clearly. If the speech therapist thinks this could be the case, you'll want to make an appointment for the child to have their hearing tested with an audiologist. The audiologist will let you know if they can hear clearly and will do a test more thorough than what the child would get in the office of a pediatrician. If your child has a lisp, get to the bottom of the problem with these solutions.  Contact a company like Braces Inc. to learn more.