Our Services

Feeding your baby shouldn't hurt, and it shouldn't take an hour.

We specialize in tethered oral tissues (tongue tie and lip tie) and assess function, not appearance. We find the root cause instead of managing symptoms.

Signs it's time for an evaluation:

• Painful latch or nipple damage

• Clicking, sputtering, or milk leaking

• Shallow latch or losing suction

• Feeds lasting over 30 minutes

• Falling asleep before finishing

• Arching, pulling off, or crying at the breast or bottle

• Gassiness, hiccups, or reflux symptoms

• Slow weight gain

• Bottle refusal or trouble going back and forth between breast and bottle

• A suspected tie you were told to wait and see on

• A suspected tie you were told that must immediatley be cut

If mealtimes have become the hardest part of your day, "she'll eat when she's hungry" isn't a plan.

Our approach is trauma-informed, child led & play based. We look at what's underneath the refusal: oral motor skill, sensory processing, medical history, and years of pressure at the table. That includes screening for tethered oral tissues, often missed in infancy, sometimes showing up later as texture aversion or pocketing.

What we help with:

• Eating fewer than 20 foods

• Weaning off of N-G or G Tube

• Gagging, retching, or vomiting at meals

• Refusing entire textures or food groups

• Stuck on purees or pouches

• Holding food in the cheeks

• Chewing forever without swallowing

• Crying or escaping the table

• Poor weight gain or Failure to Thrive

• Strong reactions to the smell, look, or feel of food

• Pediatric Feeding Disorder or ARFID

Tethered oral tissues are a core specialty of this practice. We assess function, not appearance. Not every restriction needs a release, and not every feeding problem is a tie. A functional assessment tells you which one you're dealing with before anyone picks up an instrument.

When a release is indicated, what happens in the weeks before and after is what determines whether function actually changes. We prepare the muscles beforehand by building range of motion, strength, and coordination so the new tissue can work. Afterward, we guide wound care, retrain the suck or swallow pattern, and reduce the risk of reattachment.

Signs of a tethered oral tissue:

In infants:

• Shallow latch, clicking, or milk leaking

• Nipple pain or damage

• Long, tiring, or frequent feeds

• Gassiness, reflux symptoms, or poor weight gain

In children, teens, and adults:

• Tongue that can't lift to the roof of the mouth or extend past the lips

• Persistent open mouth posture or mouth breathing

• Difficulty clearing food from the teeth or cheeks

• Picky eating or trouble with chewy and mixed textures

• Speech sound errors, especially on t, d, n, l, r, and s

• Jaw tension, clicking, or headaches

• A heart shaped tongue tip when extended

We work in close collaboration with your release provider, dentist, and lactation consultant, before and after the procedure.

Myofunctional therapy corrects the pattern itself, not just what it caused. We restore nasal breathing and tongue posture, build strength and coordination, retrain the swallow, then keep going until the new pattern holds without anyone thinking about it. Thumb sucking, prolonged pacifier use, nail biting, and tongue thrust are treated inside this program, gently and without shaming.

Signs myofunctional therapy may help:

Breathing and sleep

• Breathes through the mouth, awake or asleep

• Snores, tosses all night, wakes up repeatedly, or still wets the bed

• Chapped lips, dry mouth, or wakes up thirsty

• Dark circles, morning headaches, or tired during the day despite enough sleep

Swallowing and oral habits

• Tongue pushes against or between the teeth when swallowing (tongue thrust)

• Tongue sticks out at rest or while talking

• Messy eating, noisy chewing, or drinking constantly to wash food down

• Thumb, finger, or pacifier sucking past age three

• Nail biting or cheek chewing

Speech

• Years of speech therapy with slow or no progress on the same sounds

• Lisp, or s and z that come out slushy or with the tongue between the teeth

• Trouble with r, sh, ch, th, s, z, t, d, l, or n

• Sounds that improve in the therapy room but fall apart in conversation

• Sounds that came back after being dismissed from speech therapy

• Mumbled or hard to understand speech despite normal language skills

Teeth, jaw, and posture

• Teeth shifted after braces came off, or an open bite

• Jaw pain, clicking, grinding, or clenching

• Head juts forward, poor posture

• Referred by your dentist, orthodontist, or ENT

If your child has been in speech therapy for years and the same sounds still aren't sticking, the problem may not be the sound. When the tongue rests in the wrong place all day, it has to travel from the wrong starting point every time your child talks. Traditional articulation therapy drills the sound. Myofunctional therapy fixes where the tongue lives.

Orthodontics moves teeth. If the tongue keeps pushing, they move back.

Think of this as early myofunctional therapy.

The same muscles that will one day hold correct tongue posture are the ones your child uses right now to chew, drink, and talk. When those muscles are weak or uncoordinated, biting a cracker is hard today, and the resting patterns that shape the palate and bite are already forming.

Young children can't follow the exercise protocols older kids and adults do. So we build the same foundation through graded, play based work: jaw stability, lip closure, tongue movement, and a mature rotary chew. It looks like play. It's laying groundwork.

Signs oral motor therapy may help:

Eating and drinking

• Loses food or drink out of the mouth

• Packs food in the cheeks or under the tongue

• Chews up and down instead of side to side

• Swallows food whole, or gags on anything with texture

• Gets tired partway through a meal and quits

• Can't manage a straw or open cup, still needs a sippy

• Bites the cup or spoon, or takes bites that are too big

• Struggles with meat, raw vegetables, or anything chewy

Mouth posture and habits

• Mouth hangs open at rest

• Drools past the age you'd expect

• Breathes through the mouth

• Chews on shirts, sleeves, or toys

Speech

• Hard for other people to understand

• Leaves off sounds at the ends of words

• Speech that sounds mushy or imprecise

• Low muscle tone in the face or body

Restorative Fascial Therapy™ is a gentle, whole-body approach that addresses areas of tension and restriction within the fascial system. Because the muscles and connective tissues of the body work together, tension outside of the mouth can sometimes influence oral movement, posture, breathing, and feeding patterns.

At Little Eaters, RFT techniques may be incorporated into feeding and myofunctional therapy to support improved mobility, decrease patterns of tension and compensation, and create a stronger foundation for functional movement.

Who may benefit?
RFT may be helpful for infants and children experiencing:

• Body or oral tension and asymmetries
• Feeding, sucking, chewing, or swallowing difficulties
• Difficulty with tongue, lip, or jaw mobility
• Oral-motor compensations
• Tethered oral tissues (tongue, lip, or buccal ties), including support before and after a release
• Mouth breathing or difficulty maintaining a comfortable closed-mouth posture
• Postural patterns that may be contributing to oral or facial function
• Persistent tension patterns affecting feeding or myofunctional therapy progress

How can it help?
By addressing tension and mobility throughout the body, not just inside the mouth RFT may help improve freedom of movement and reduce compensatory patterns. This can complement feeding and myofunctional therapy by helping the child access more efficient oral-motor, breathing, and movement patterns.