Want to put your baby on the fast track to being a smooth talker ?

Being a smooth talker requires a super fit mouth – breastfeeding gives your baby’s mouth a muscle building workout, but dummy sucking leaves the mouth slothful

On paper at least………………. breast feeding is less work than formula feeding. All that is required to engage in a feeding session, is that Mom shows up.

And baby latches on.

No mixing things, no heating things – just latch and load.

Well, Mom might not be working quite as hard, during the feeding process, but baby is getting quite a workout.

Breast feeding is hard work

In contrast to the teat on a bottle, the breast nipple “mechanism”, relies on more than just gravity, to create flow. Getting the milk to flow and flow, requires a certain amount of pulling.

Baby’s who are breast fed, give their mouth’s a workout, every time they feed.

Now, working out the mouth muscles, has benefits, it enhances baby’s oral skills.

Which means, they’re eating and talking ADEPTLY, a whole lot sooner, than their bottle fed peers – this is what team of researchers from Brazil discovered…..

Working out the stomatognathic system

The what ?

Yup, the word is a mouth full. It is the combination of organs, structures, and nerves involved in speech and reception, mastication, and deglutition of food i.e. EATING.

It includes

your teeth,
the jaws,
the masticatory muscles,
the tongue,
the lips,
the surrounding tissues, and
the nerves that control these structures.

You need it to be working – to receive, chew and swallow food.

And to talk.

How good the stomatognathic system is, at 9 months old, depends on what your mouth has been up to since birth…..

Lock and load

The research team invited 125, healthy 9 month old babies and their caregivers, to the lab, to test out their oral skills. At the start of the study, caregivers completed a questionnaire which probed their breast feeding and weaning practices.

Under the watch full eye of a qualified speech therapist, a family member, then fed the little one. The caregivers used utensils, that had been brought from home, to ensure that the baby was not distracted by the presence of unfamiliar cutlery.

The therapist scored each child, on how well they moved their tongue and jaw, as well as their lip positioning,

while sucking,
while sipping and
taking food from a spoon

The team discovered………….

Breast feeders are most proficient

And dummy users, were dunces.

Ouch !

Breast feeding involves intense muscular activity, which explains why it provides promotes craniofacial development. So improved oral skills are expected to go, hand-in-hand with breast feeding.

But, the finding that a pacifier can undo all this good, is a little bit surprising.

The team speculate that the introduction of the pacifier,

changes the movement in the perioral muscles, mainly the tongue, which leads to changes in the mouth position at rest, and
pacifiers are known to contribute to earlier weaning – the switch to a bottle, leaves baby exercising the mouth muscles less.

It’s a case of USE IT OR LOSE IT.

Hup, two, three, four….

You want ensure your baby’s mouth is working out, regularly, so your baby is able to get ahead.

This research shows, when it comes to smooth talking….

Breastfeeding puts baby on the fast track. Using a dummy, delays the development.

NOTE : Fortunately, most of us master our stomatognathic system, eventually. Of course, some of us, actually end up being TOO PROFICIENT at spoon locking and loading….

Influence of breastfeeding on children’s oral skills. Rev Saúde Pública (2013) 47(1). Lisiane Martins da SilveiraI Leila Sauer Prade, Aneline Maria Ruede, Léris Salete Bonfanti Haeffner, Angela Regina Macie Weinmann.