Impacts of Ankyloglossia on Speech and Feeding

Ankyloglossia, or tongue tie, is a condition that restricts tongue mobility as a result of the presence of a short, tight lingual frenulum. It can also be characterized as having a “square, heart shaped, or indented tip of tongue at rest and/or upon attempted protrusions” (Potock, 2015, para. 5). A majority of individuals have some sort of webbing underneath their tongue, but those who have tongue ties tend to have more of that webbing than usual. To better understand the details of ankyloglossia, Baxter et al. (2018) compared the condition to syndactyly. As with tongue ties, patients with syndactyly have too much webbing; however, theirs occurs between their fingers. They struggle with mobility just the same.