While it may seem harmless, mouth breathing affects how your child develops, your child’s behavior and personality, as well as the adult that your child grows up to be.

Most healthcare professionals might tell you not to worry about mouth breathing and insist that your child will “grow out of it.”

But the truth is, mouth breathing can have devastating effects on the development of the face and airway.

When nasal breathing is blocked, facial and dental development become abnormal.

If untreated mouth breathing leads to development of long, narrow faces with crooked teeth, receded jaw, and future TMD and headache issues.  Capturing these issues early will aid in facial development and may avoid future costs of Orthopedics and Orthodontics.

But it’s not just about looks. When the jaw and airway don’t fully develop, the airway can become easily obstructed during sleep.

During the deep stage sleep, the muscles around the airway also becomes relaxed and collapse.

The airway is a tight space, often made tighter by large tonsils and adenoids in both children and infants.

If the airway becomes obstructed, the brain must bounce out of deep sleep and into a lighter stage of sleep in order to grind and clench to push the jaw forward to allow for breathing again.

Grinding and clenching are the body’s way of reopening a collapsed airway during sleep to start breathing again. This is why grinding, and clenching are the new red flag for catching sleep apnea early on.

Interrupting deep sleep like this impacts development.

Deep sleep is when Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is released, which is essential to a child’s brain development and long bone growth.

In a child who is snoring, grinding and clenching, or breathing through the mouth, the brain is not able to rest, and sleep is not restorative.

Children who are deprived of deep sleep are often hyperactive, are unable to achieve their academic potential. Unfortunately they are often diagnosed with ADHD and other behavioural issues. They have lowered immune systems, poor health, and can be overweight.