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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

Looking For More? Try these categories

ADL

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Oral Motor

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One Comment

  1. What precautions do you follow with using vibration with kids that have seizures and more recently reflex seizures now that there is research suggesting the use of vibrating toothbrushes have preceded seizure activity in adults.

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