Do the test and look at your child when they sleep or when they are playing Fortnite on the console: do they keep their mouth open? That's because oral breathing prevails over nasal breathing in their habits, which can lead to a receding lower jaw.
Believe it or not, oral breathing is abnormal, we should breathe through our nose. Breathing daily through the mouth causes our face to change in order to develop this habit more effectively. Consequently, the palate grows inwards instead of widthways. The jaw wants to move forward, but because of where the palate grows it cannot.
This affects the balance of the face and its development. Looking at our children in profile we can see that the lips are not aligned vertically, but that the lower lip is tucked inwards. As our children get older, the jaw will recede more and more, resulting in a face with a small chin. In the video below, our Dr. Consuelo Badía explains it in detail.
Oral breathing causes our face to have little chin
And what can we do? When the confinement due to the coronavirus has passed and we can meet again, in our orthodontics and dental health clinic in Valencia we will teach your son or daughter the correct guidelines to breathe properly. What you can do now is buy physiological saline solution from an online pharmacy to clean his or her nose. With open airways, encourage him/her to breathe properly.
If this does not work, an ear, nose and throat specialist may be able to help. They may have hypertrophic turbinates or enlarged tonsils. In any case, it is common that with the nasal passages cleaned and by instructing them to breathe through their nose, this will resolve the problem.
