Welcome to Tongue in Cheek

Let's be honest: parenting, child development, feeding, speech, sleep, behavior, breathing, and the internet's opinions about all of those things can feel... a little overwhelming.

One minute you're looking up whether it's normal for your toddler to only eat beige foods. The next minute you're three hours deep into a rabbit hole about tongue ties, mouth breathing, nervous system regulation, sensory processing, and whether blueberries count as a vegetable.

(For the record, they do not.)

I'm Kaylene, a Speech-Language Pathologist, and this blog was born out of the realization that children are wonderfully complex and that the questions families ask rarely fit neatly into one category.

A child doesn't arrive in a speech-therapy clinic and announce, "Hello. I am exclusively a speech problem." Communication affects feeding. Feeding affects family life. Sleep affects behavior. Breathing affects sleep. Parents affect children, children affect parents, and everyone affects how much coffee gets consumed before noon.

The more years I spend working with children and families, the more convinced I become that everything is connected—and that most topics deserve a little more nuance than a social media infographic can provide.

That's where Tongue in Cheek comes in.

Here you'll find evidence-informed discussions about speech, feeding, oral function, child development, parenting, and the occasional professional rabbit hole that I find too interesting not to share.

You'll also find a healthy respect for uncertainty. I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. But I do enjoy asking good questions, examining the evidence, and helping families make sense of topics that can feel confusing or controversial.

My hope is that this space feels like sitting down with a knowledgeable clinician who takes her work seriously, but not herself too seriously.

So whether you're here because your child won't touch anything green, you're trying to understand what orthodontics might do to your child's teeth, you're curious about oral function, or you're simply looking for thoughtful discussion about nasal breathing, welcome.

I'm glad you're here.

Before You Go

Where is your tongue resting right now?

Is the tip gently sitting on the bumpy ridge just behind your upper front teeth, or somewhere else without you really noticing?

And if you’ve already fallen down an internet rabbit hole before arriving here, welcome—this is one of the more useful places to surface.

— Kaylene

Kaylene and her family on Vancouver Island, BC