Vibration For Oral Motor Stimulation

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I am seeing a little girl who enjoys eating, but she does not yet move her tongue to the side (tongue lateralization) in order to move her food around in her mouth. I will often use vibration in the mouth to stimulate more tongue and cheek movement.

Sometimes I will have parents get a baby vibrating toothbrush to use (yes these are real), but for this little girl, I tried out the DnZ-Vibe by ARK. The great thing about using the DnZ-vibe as a therapist is that it has screw off tips, so each child that I work with can have their own tip, while I just have one vibe. When using the vibrating toothbrush, I would have to have a whole toothbrush for each student that needed to use it. With the DnZ-Vibe, I just need to have a tip for each child, and only one vibe.

The little girl loved the vibration, and she was enjoying biting the tip between her molars. I gave gentle pressure to the sides of her tongue with the vibe, and by the end of the session, I saw her showing more reflexive lateral tongue movement. We will keep working on this to get that tongue movement to be less reflexive and more controlled.

Materials:

• ARK’s DnZ-Vibe, or vibrating baby toothbrush.

Skills:

• Oral motor