Beyond the Frenulum: Why Tongue Tie Is Not the Whole Story

The story doesn't start in the tongue. It lives in the whole body--unfolding in places we almost forgot to look.

We’re told tongue tie is either everything or nothing. Cut it, and your child will eat. Cut it, and they’ll speak. Or don’t—because it’s "mild" and doesn’t matter. But what if neither is the full truth?

This article is my story—of walking through the clinical world, the somatic world, and my own healing, and realizing: it was never just about the tongue.

It’s about nervous system safety. It’s about the deeper scaffolding of movement and regulation. It’s about what happens when we reduce complex, relational patterns into quick fixes—and what’s possible when we don’t.

This isn’t a how-to. It’s a reckoning, a reflection, and a return.

Introduction

I didn’t set out to become known for tongue ties. But after my first oral-facial myology training, I looked at my caseload with new eyes—and I saw it everywhere. At least 85% of the children I worked with had some variation of tongue tie. And yet, year after year, I ran into the same wall: professionals who dismissed it, parents who were unsure, and systems that failed to recognize its impact—especially when it wasn't obvious. If it wasn’t anterior, if it didn’t fit the narrow diagnostic box, it was deemed irrelevant.

But it wasn’t irrelevant. I saw the way it shaped feeding, speech, regulation, posture. I also saw how little traction I had when no one else could—or would—see it too.

A Long Road with Few Answers

For years, I sat in the tension between knowing and not being able to do anything about it. I could see how deeply a tethered tongue was affecting a child’s ability to eat or speak, but physicians would refuse release, often stating it was “mild” or “posterior” and therefore not a problem. I remember one child with a severe tongue tie—so tight it affected every aspect of oral motor function—whose doctor released only the lip. The lip. Because that’s what he knew.

Still, I honored what parents wanted. Always. It was their journey, not mine. But what haunted me was this: even when we did get a release, it didn’t always make a difference. Not in the way we hoped.

When I Learned the Hard Way

One of the first children I supported through a release was nonverbal. We fought hard to get it done. And when it was over—nothing changed. Not in speech. Not in regulation. It devastated me. I had believed it would be the missing piece. I had given that mother hope, and it turned out to be false hope. That’s when I started looking deeper.

This child couldn’t imitate. Couldn’t attend. Had no awareness of his body, no capacity for sequencing or regulation. And here we were cutting tissue when the nervous system hadn’t even begun to organize itself. It hit me like a freight train: this isn’t just about the tongue.

The Backlash of Simplicity

Now, we’re swinging in the other direction. Everyone is talking about tongue tie. Parents are being told it's the reason their child isn’t talking, or eating, or sleeping. And while sometimes, yes, it’s part of the puzzle—it is not the whole picture. I’ve seen babies get released with no feeding issues, simply because someone said, "Well, there's a tie."

I understand. Parents want to do the right thing. They want to give their child the best chance. But what if the story is bigger?

Honoring the Parent’s Wisdom

For a long time, I pushed for releases—because I knew what I was seeing. But over the years, I learned something even more valuable: this work is relational. And the more I trusted parents—truly trusted them to know what felt right for their child—the more efficient and aligned the process became. It was never about me being right. It wasn’t about my ego. The parents weren’t obstacles. They were the key.

I began to see that honoring their pace, their intuition, their readiness, was not only respectful—it was clinical wisdom. This isn’t about convincing. It’s about walking with.

My Own Release—And the Truth It Revealed

I didn’t pursue a release for speech. That wasn’t my symptom. What I didn’t realize was how deeply my tongue tie had been affecting my swallowing, posture, and nervous system. Swallowing for me was a full-body effort—a whole-neck, whole-tongue swallow. I had to use massive force to get food down. My neck would lock in, my whole system would brace. And I had no idea that a true, reflexive swallow is quiet. Subtle. It happens at the back of the tongue, almost without conscious effort.

After the release, I finally experienced that kind of swallow. But the release also unraveled years of compensatory structure. Before the release, I had already started to feel nerve pain—burning at the base of my skull and face, uncontrolled ticking around my eyes and cheeks. It was the beginning of Bell’s palsy symptoms, though I didn’t know that yet.

And then, when the tie was released, I lost the very tension my body had been relying on for support. The fascia had been holding me together. Without it, my joints became hypermobile. My hips popped constantly. My sciatic pain made it impossible to sit or drive comfortably. My bones felt like they were collapsing into my nerves. And 18 months later, the Bell’s palsy symptoms returned. I realized: the release alone wasn’t the answer.

And even still—years later—I’m unraveling the bracing patterns. My neck, which stayed tight even after the release, is finally starting to let go. But only now, as I rebuild true stability in my core—in the deep reflexes and the central axis of my body—is my neck finally able to release its grip.

Because the truth is this: the fascial restriction that we think of as “the problem” is often also “the solution” the body has created to survive. And if we take it away without giving the system something more foundational to organize around—it collapses.

Why I Stopped Looking for Tongue Ties

I used to assess every child for tongue tie. I knew the diagnostic markers. I had trained in oral facial myology—three times. I believed that if I could just get the precision right, the function would follow.

But over time, something shifted. I began to see that progress wasn’t dependent on a diagnosis. And more importantly, I started to question what it meant when a parent couldn’t see what I saw—when they couldn’t move forward with a release, even if I thought it might help.

That’s when I realized: that’s not a failure of awareness. That’s attachment. That’s infant mental health. That’s something in the relationship—a block, a rupture, a protective instinct—that’s just as important to address as any physical restriction. There was something keeping that parent from seeing their child clearly. That’s not a surgical issue. That’s relational work.

I also stopped looking after a specific moment that stayed with me. I had joined the first cohort of a mentorship program in a well-known feeding approach. I was eager. I believed I’d find a bridge between clinical structure and the more intuitive, regulation-centered work I was already doing.

But I quickly realized I didn’t fit.

They told me my work wasn’t clinical enough. That it wasn’t “clean” enough. I was filming home visits in rural areas—places where nothing is neat or tidy, where trauma and tenderness coexist in every session. And I couldn’t distill what I was doing into their model, because their model wasn’t built to hold what I was seeing.

At one point, I asked a question about a clearly tethered infant whose oral function was compromised. I was dismissed. Laughed off. Told that in decades of clinical work, this was rarely, if ever, considered a meaningful factor.

And in that moment, I knew: they weren’t willing to see what I see.

I felt ashamed. I felt small. I was failed in the program for not being clinical enough—but I also knew, deep down, that what I was offering was valid. It just didn’t fit their framework. And I wasn’t willing to contort the truth to make it palatable.

So I stopped bringing up tongue ties unless a parent asked. I stopped chasing referrals. I honestly don’t even remember the diagnostic criteria in full. I can still recognize it when it’s significant—but it’s no longer my focus. Because that’s not the only way in.

What really changed everything was the first MNRI training I took. I came back and looked at a five-year-old client I had been working with—resistant, defiant, unwilling to do any of the exercises no matter how many reinforcements or strategies we used. And suddenly, I saw him differently: he wasn’t being difficult. He was neurologically immature.

He didn’t yet have the reflexive organization to move his face and mouth the way I was asking. The structures weren’t ready. His nervous system didn’t yet know how. And in that moment, I felt something in me collapse. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t take money for a method that targeted symptoms while missing the root.

So I stopped.

That was the beginning of everything else. That was the moment I chose depth over compliance, relationship over protocol. That child—and that rupture—taught me what no textbook ever could: we cannot build skill on top of disorganization and expect it to stick.

Where This Has Led Me—And What I Offer Now

I used to think the problem was just the tongue. But the deeper I’ve gone—through my own healing and years of supporting others—the clearer it has become: we cannot separate tissue from the nervous system, or movement from meaning.

A release is not just about mobility. It’s about restoring connection. And connection doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The nervous system must feel safe enough to let go. The brain must know how to map the body. The body must be able to stabilize from the inside out.

This is where I work now—at the intersection of safety, structure, and signal.

What I’ve learned is that before fascia can truly release, the nervous system must be calm. And when that safety is in place, the fascia begins to unwind. The brain starts mapping new pathways. And then, from that foundation, we can begin to build true stability—not just muscular strength, but reflexive, coordinated stability that flows through center of gravity.

This work isn’t about force. It’s about remembering how to move through gravity, through breath, through deep developmental pathways. I often return to Archetype One from MNRI—basic flexion and extension—as the foundation. It was my own starting point when I had no other way to stabilize. And it’s where many I support begin, too.

From there, I help rebuild movement from the core rectangle—connecting that stability to the sternum, the sacrum, each leg, each arm. Then, layer by layer, we integrate the stabilizing reflexes that hold up the skeletal system and give space for the nerves to innervate. Not big, gross movements—but deep, tiny, reflexive ones that create the scaffolding for real function.

Because when the nervous system can work through those reflexive pathways, everything changes. Fluid starts to move. Joints stabilize. Breath returns. The body becomes a place you can live in again.

A Final Reflection: Finding Our Way Through the Noise

Let me be clear: I believe tongue tie releases have their place. I’ve seen them bring relief. I’ve felt it in my own body. But we live in a world that’s fast. We want quick answers. We want the pain to stop. We want to make sure our child is “okay.” And sometimes, that desperation finds a single target—just fix the tongue—even when the story is much bigger.

Even when the release is presented thoughtfully, it can still fall into the category of “solution” because that’s how we’re conditioned to receive care. Something is wrong, we fix it. But healing isn’t linear. It’s not mechanical. And it’s not one-size-fits-all.

The truth is, there are many paths. The release was the one I chose. And maybe I didn’t need it—but I did need the work that followed. Because whether or not I had gone through with the release, I still would have had to find my way back to my body. I still would have had to calm my nervous system, release the layers of fascial bracing, and rebuild reflexive, developmental support if I ever wanted to reclaim my life from chronic anxiety, inflammation, and collapse.

The release didn’t save me. But it did symbolize something I needed: the right to take up space. The right to speak. The right to unfurl, even after years of silence. That mattered.

And that’s what I want to say most clearly: there is no right path. There is only your path. And whether that includes a release or not, the healing will still ask the same thing of you—to return. To your body. To your breath. To your timing. To the knowing that has been there all along.

This path isn’t about fixing. It’s about becoming.