Hi everybody, and welcome back to Airway First, the podcast from the Children's Airway
First Foundation.
I'm your host, Rebecca Downey.
My guest today is Daniel Drew.
Daniel, a native of Dover, Delaware, returned to the area to practice speech therapy after
obtaining his master's degree in speech language pathology from MGH Institute of Health
Profession.
Daniel has versed in a variety of settings, including school-based speech therapy, out
patient pediatrics, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, and acute care settings.
Daniel treats patients at the Center for Airway and Facial Development and Pain and Sleep
Therapy Center in Newark, Delaware.
He is also a speech language pathologist at Bay Health Medical Center in Dover, Delaware.
During the initial COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel saw many of his clients in the hospital setting
were having difficulty meeting their speech and swallowing goals due to high anxiety,
pain, and stress.
He implemented various breathing exercises into his speech therapy sessions in order to
help his patients better participate in their inpatient rehabilitation programs.
This led him to becoming certified in the Boutaiko breathing method.
Daniel's strong desire to learn and broaden his knowledge brought him back to the pediatric
setting after years of work in inpatient rehabilitation hospitals in order to pursue
myofunctional therapy with both adults and children at the Center for Airway and Facial
Development in Newark, Delaware.
His foundation as a medical speech language pathologist makes him uniquely suited to address
common problems that were associated with myofunctional disorders.
In his spare time, Daniel enjoys reading new research in sleep and breathing science,
long distance running, and weightlifting.
You can find out more about Daniel at afdortho.com and by following him on Instagram at Mr. Underscore
Mayo 302.
And now here's my interview with Daniel Drew.
All right.
Thank you so much for joining us today on the broadcast, Daniel.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm I'm excited.
Yeah, absolutely.
And just to kind of let parents know, and I'll put links and everything in our show notes,
but if they would like to follow you on Instagram, you are Mr. Underscore Mayo 302.
And that's actually where I ran into you was on Instagram, saw what you were doing and
totally fell in love with you.
So thank you so much for being on the show.
I love what you do on social.
Thank you so much for reaching out.
Yeah.
I was excited to hear from you.
I was excited to get some word out.
Yeah.
And that's part of what I really liked is you take a very different approach to getting
the word out and then talking about myopunctional therapy and reading on social media.
So you tie it in with your daily life and humor, which I think is really great.
And that's part of what popped my eye.
So one of the things that you talk about is exercise-based myofunctional therapy.
So let's just start with what that is and just for our jumping off point.
Sure.
Well, so exercise-based myofunctional therapy, I mean, a lot of people, I mean, when they
first hear about myofunctional therapy, when we have to explain them, we kind of explain
it's physical therapy for the muscles of the jaw, the tongue, the lips.
I've been practicing speech language therapy for a very long time.
And what I found with most of my clients, actually, was that they needed to practice,
they needed to do the exercises two to three times a day.
And when I saw, when I'm working with children and when I saw working with adults is those
persons who worked on those exercises, and I could tell based on how patient and based
on changes in function, I could tell that they were doing these exercises.
And these were the people who I saw were having the most progress.
So I very much stress the exercise component.
It's not just doing exercise, but also stretches, massages.
But so that's kind of how I like to delineate myself a little bit.
Not so much as a myofunctional therapist, but as a speech therapist, I think that myofunctional
therapy is like just a great foundation for good speech therapy, having good range of
motion, good strength, and loosening up tight tissues that are restricting.
And so that's kind of where the exercise based myofunctional therapy comes from.
All right.
And why did you choose on social media to take such a different perspective as far as
getting your message out there?
Well, when it comes to with humor, I guess, you know, people want to, they don't want
to be lectured at.
We know that, right?
Patients during sessions don't want to be lectured at.
They want things to be fun.
They want to learn.
And they want to laugh.
What I'm learning, I mean, I'm 35, not the youngest person, not the oldest.
But what I'm learning is that the attention span is sometimes pretty limited.
So you got to put something out there funny.
And that's how you'll kind of get people's attention.
And so I'm also getting, I would say, a little bit more comfortable with myself in front of
a camera, which is, you know, and the way that I do that is some nervous laughter, probably
to start.
And then a little bit more, you know, let's like really make this fun.
Like talk with a silly voice, you know, post everyday problems that you have in the home
and how you can do breathing exercises while you're doing your household chores or while
you're making your coffee or, you know, things like that.
Working in your basement with your nose strip, for example.
Exactly.
Working in the basement.
Chipping away at point.
That's what I love about.
So clearly, you know, nasal breathing and how that's your passion.
You know, where did this passion, where did it come from?
Oh, wow.
To keep it short.
Man, can't even.
Like about three years ago.
No, just go for it.
So I've been a lifelong, like kind of, exercise or runner, if you will.
So running was always a hobby all the way back to like high school, cross country, track
and field.
I was one of those guys.
And about three years ago, I was really having a hard time.
I was getting short of breath.
I was getting headaches, legs cramping up and wasn't able to run as far as they used to
be able to.
And I was like, what is, what is, what is going on?
And I came across this book by James Nester, not James Nester, Patrick McCown called the
Oxygen Advantage.
And I found out that I was hyperventilating.
So as soon as I was running out the door, I found that I was breathing through my mouth
and I was breathing fast already.
And I, as I read the book, I was like, oh, for what?
I just started running.
I don't need to breathe like that.
And then of course I found that, you know, nasal breathing is most optimal for physical
activity.
And that was just a huge paradigm shift for me because I thought to myself, how come,
how come nobody told me how important is the breathe through my nose?
Like in all my life, in 30, I guess at the time, 32, 33 years, no one ever once told
me doctor, nurse, teacher or coach basketball coach, cross country coach.
Nobody told me about like the importance of nasal breathing.
So I was amazed and I'm like, I'm still amazed.
And I knew that I needed to be that person at that point.
I needed to kind of change my focus and be that person who it stresses the importance
of nasal breathing.
And you know, it's, you make a very interesting and valid statement.
It's something that I have heard a lot on the podcast, but you know, up until recently,
you don't hear about nasal breathing.
I just, you know, just wouldn't talk about it.
So what, where is this coming from all of a sudden all of a sudden it's just like this
light has gone off everywhere and everyone is talking about it.
And it's, you know, we're all pushing, you know, in the same direction to try to get
this message out.
I mean, it's content is just so available now.
And I think that that has something to do with it podcasts, these books.
I mean, when I initially started, I mean, I started with the oxygen advantage and then
I read breath by James Nester.
And then just book after book on breathing.
I think COVID was a really, really big wake up call to a lot of people.
I know that that changed me as I was in the inpatient rehab setting at the time.
And I had a lot of clients who just couldn't really participate in therapy because of like
stress anxiety and like pain.
And so I couldn't really work with them on their speech or they're swallowing because
of all these other issues going on.
And I found that like, you know, incorporating breathing exercises is was something that was
helping my patients to actually work on their goals.
But I think, I mean, you know, there's a lot of factors that have kind of parents are
asking questions.
Yeah, they're asking questions.
They're not, you know, doctors, speech pathologists, myofunctional therapists, you know, we know
what we know.
Other people know things that we don't.
And people are asking more questions and they're seeking answers from multiple sources and
they're doing their own research.
And it's amazing.
It's great.
I love it when people question.
Yeah.
And asking what's going on.
And are you also starting to see a lot more referrals coming in from pediatricians in
Venice?
Mm hmm.
I mean, that's one of the one of the, I think the biggest things is a myofunctional therapist
is the education aspect.
We're not just educating parents, we're educating kids, we're going to dental practices, we're
educating the dentists, we're educating speech language pathologists.
Because in my experience, you know, in schooling, I didn't really look under the tongue too
much.
Yeah.
And as a, I would, I just, I think that it's a missing part kind of from a lot of speech
language pathology curriculums.
And I just, I find that that's becoming like education is becoming one of the, one of the
things that's helping to garner those referrals.
Pediatricians are looking, looking for help.
People are looking for help.
Yeah.
That's true.
And you work in your practice, you work with children and adults, correct?
That's correct.
Yeah, that's correct.
Also a little bit more about your practice, where are we all located and just a little
bit more?
Sure, sure.
So we're, we're located in Newark, Delaware.
We're called the, the Center for Airway and Facial Development.
And our sister practice is called the Pain and Sleep Therapy Center.
We have a practice in Newark, Delaware, and we also have one near the main line in Philadelphia.
So the Pain and Sleep Therapy Center is more so adult centered clients with TMJ, sleep
apnea and issues of the like.
And then so our new center, the Center for Airway and Facial Development is, is a pediatric
focused center working on intervention through early intervention and through prevention.
And you know, we saw or Dr. Robinson, the, our triple board certified, like TMJ and sleep
dentist.
And he's the individual who does the functional perineal plasty procedures.
He noticed that a lot of his adult patients, I mean, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we
they developed into these issues.
And, you know, when you research like more about pediatric growth and development, we
see that all of these adult issues could have potentially been prevented.
And so then that's what kind of spearheaded him to open the Center for Airway and Facial
Development with our other pediatric dentist, Dr. Joanna Green.
And so that's when we offer early intervention consults for babies, toddlers, up to, up to
like a school age.
We do, or Dr. Green does fixed expanders.
She uses the ALF appliance.
We do myofunctional therapy consultations, obviously, you know, pediatric vernactimes
and functional perineal plasties.
But it's all centered under one, in one place.
I work in collaboration with another myofunctional therapist, Lauren Reinhold.
She has a background in registered dental hygiene.
And my background's in speech language pathologies, medical based primarily.
So we have like a good together.
We have a really good base of knowledge.
Again, we have Dr. Green, who does, she does structural development.
And she's very familiar, obviously, with pediatric growth and development.
And then in the future, we're looking to, I mean, occupational therapy, feeding therapy.
You know, maybe in-house body work, such as craniosacral therapy.
Yeah.
The stars are the limit.
Yeah.
They are.
I love that you're doing all of this together.
Exactly.
We're seeing a lot more of this kind of cross-functional team work in practices.
Our core values are compassion, innovation, collaboration, which is so important.
I mean, myofunctional disorders, they rarely, rarely exist in isolation.
There's other things going on in the body, potentially like allergies.
And so we need to educate and we need to collaborate with other providers and speak with them and
ask for their help.
Yeah.
And I am hearing a lot of that, this kind of whole body approach is really moving more
to the forefront.
And for our listeners, I'll put a link because a couple of podcasts with Dr. Hall and then
Dr. Tasha to talk about they'll apply a pancranial sacral to make it easier for parents.
I want to get a little bit more specific now if we could on something.
Sure.
And so when you're resting your tongue in your roof of your mouth, we talk about this
a lot.
And I've said another podcast, I always try to do this, which I'm sure parents are doing
when they're listening to it.
We all try to do it.
Yeah.
Exactly.
What does it look like?
So when you're trying it at home, how do you know if you're doing this correctly or
if you have a top tie?
Oh, yeah.
So that would be, well, what I would recommend is you schedule a consult with a myofunctional
therapist.
We would gather some objective information, photographs and just review that with the
client.
Potentially in our office, we do the CBCT scan in order to get like a really good picture
of the whole airway and how the craniofacial development has been progressing.
But yeah, in order to rest your tongue to the roof of the mouth, I would say we, it's
difficult for us to really put, we want the tip of the tongue on the spot or right behind
the two front teeth on that little piece of skin where we typically maybe burn on a piece
of pizza.
And then we want the middle and the back of the tongue fully up.
And this is me all the time in sessions, putting my, my hands up.
This is your tongue.
And if you're able to suction your tongue gently to the roof of your mouth comfortably,
that's kind of an indication.
Maybe you don't have a tongue tie, but if you're, you're doing so and it's effortful
and there's other muscles that you have to engage like in your neck or in your eyes as
you're lifting your tongue up.
Then that's kind of an indication of either like a tongue tie or a tongue restriction.
But it could also be low tone, low tongue tone.
Many of my clients, it's really difficult to determine whether there's a tie until we
do exercises.
You're listening to Airway First with today's guest, Daniel Drew.
You can find out more about the Children's Airway First Foundation and our mission to
ensure that every child has access to screening, evaluation and treatment of all children's
airway disorders before the age of six on our website at childrensairwayfirst.org.
The CAF website offers tons of great resources for parents, including videos, blogs, recommended
books, comprehensive medical research, and so much more.
We also invite parents to join our Facebook support group, the Airway Huddle.
The Airway Huddle is a group for parents of children with airway and sleep related issues.
You can access the Airway Huddle support group at facebook.com backslashgroups backslashairwayhuddle.
Are you interested in becoming a guest on Airway First or do you have an idea for an
upcoming episode?
Then shoot us a note via the contacts page on our website or send us an email directly
at infoatchildrensairwayfirst.org.
As a reminder, this podcast and the opinions expressed here are not a medical diagnosis.
If you suspect your child might have an airway issue, contact your pediatric airway dentist
or pediatrician.
And now let's jump back into today's interview with my guest, Daniel Drew.
Yeah, and you mentioned tongue tone.
So I've read that and some other stuff.
What is that exactly?
I mean, are you literally talking about just like in your arm muscle tone?
It's the same thing?
Yes, it's a similar thing.
The tongue is a muscle.
It's a really important muscle and the tongue ideally should rest against the roof of the
mouth.
And if it's not strong enough, that's one thing that can potentially limit it from reaching
the roof of the mouth.
So I mean, signs of low tone can be like lots of when you stick the tongue out, lots of
quivering of the tongue, really just difficulty elevating the tip of the tongue, maybe the
back of the tongue.
But tone or function is one of the first things that we're looking at in our evaluations.
And that's an important thing too.
I mean, if you see a frenem, that's one thing.
I mean, of course, this frenem may be holding the tongue down, but also the tongue might
have become weak because that frenem has been holding the tongue down this whole time and
it hasn't been able to elevate.
And other muscles have been again compensating and trying to help out trying to help the
tongue reach up there.
Got it.
Okay.
That makes sense.
So, and they can't see us, but I just kind of want to divert a little bit because we
were talking before we went live.
Behind you, there are some books.
And we've got several of them on our website, but I just wanted to talk about a little bit
because obviously you've read these and these are things you probably recommend to parents.
So I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to speak to these a little bit, especially the ones that
are there for kids because we don't see a lot of those.
So we have, breathing is my superpower.
That's one of the good ones for, I think that this is a good school age type of book teaches
a lot about, you know, it's an empowering book and it kind of teaches children about
how, you know, we can change our breathing, we can control our breathing.
And when we control our breathing, it can have an effect on our emotions and our behaviors.
And it's a good kid friendly way to kind of, to kind of explain something that is complex,
breathing and often like we're not educated too much at a young age about the importance
of breathing and proper breathing.
So I like that book and then there's a couple of other ones behind it that are for, let's
say toddler age, the one, Lick and Sniff by Matthew Van Fleet.
Those are really good from a sensory motor approach, I think for children.
We definitely recommend those in like early intervention are like one to maybe three or
four ages, getting kids just exploring what they can do with their tongue licking and
like the importance of their nose with this, the sniff book.
Those are definitely recommended.
Really good reads and really good kids love them.
They want to read them every time they come into my office.
They always see the breathing is my superpower.
They always want to read that one together.
I love that.
And I'll definitely put links in the show notes, but part of why, you know, they caught
my eye so quickly trying to explain this to children.
I would imagine this is, you know, as I'm just coming at it from a parent, but, you know,
as a professional, trying to explain to children what these exercises that you're teaching them
are so important.
I would think resources like this are really helpful.
They are, they are.
And we know Patrick McCown is just the best when it comes to putting these this information
out there for children as well.
I mean, the ABC's Always Breathe Correctly is one of my favorite books as well.
And all of his pediatric resources are, you know, available online.
Having kids to understand it, he's great at that too.
I mean, I took his certification course in the Buteco breathing method.
And that's one of the, one of the first things that he mentions is this, how we, how we get
children to understand this.
And how do we get children to care about breathing correctly?
Yeah.
Well, because it's going to help you with sports and athletics, all of my little boy
clients love it.
All of, all of my adult clients like that aspect as well.
Sure.
It's one of the aspects too of, you know, nasal breathing is, makes us look a little bit,
it makes us look more intelligent.
And it helps us to, I mean, regulate our, our behavior better.
It helps us to remain calm.
And so, I mean, Patrick McCown, I can't say enough great things about him and all the
books and the courses that he's, again, my foundation started with the Oxygen Advantage
Program as my, with my background as an athlete.
So now I'm just continuing to absorb the pediatric focus.
Yeah.
Everything that we can.
Right.
And that's something else that I have found a lot with guests on our show, just lifelong
learners.
And you're just grabbing more and learning more.
And I think that goes back to what we talked about earlier.
That's helping to get the message out.
Cause the more we're learning, the more we're sharing.
Exactly.
I was sharing with Dr. Green, our pediatric dentist.
We've been sharing research together recently that we've discovered.
And we're, we're looking at when, when a person comes in for a consultation, we're looking
immediately at the chief concerns that these people are, are having about their children.
And then we're, we're finding research articles that are specific to the symptoms and the diagnosis
that, that these children are coming to us with.
And we're showing these parents that we can with conservative, with conservative measures,
we can, we can treat this.
And asthma is a very good example of what we've been looking at a lot recently is sure
there's, there's a place for, for medications.
There's definitely a place for medications to treat asthma, but the Puteco breathing method,
there's a decade, almost more of research of using breathing exercises to, to lessen
the severity of asthma symptoms.
And in my adult clients, COPD.
Wow.
And so it's, it's pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
See, I, I would never have put two and two together for asthma.
I mean, I, I, and it makes sense for some of the things I would expect that you're seeing
like ADHD, you know, but did not see that, that asthma connection come in with that one.
And you know, you're, you're talking about breathing methods and that's something else
that we're hearing a lot of talk around lately.
And it's not always clear, you know, breathwork, everybody keeps using the term breathwork.
So I'd like to talk a little bit about, you know, what, what is that and what are, what
do these exercises look like?
Oh, that's excellent.
So what is breathwork?
Breathwork can encompass a lot of, a lot of different things.
It can encompass regulating the, the rate at which you're breathing, slowing your breathing
down.
It can involve breath holds, doing breath holding.
There's different methods.
You know, the Wim Hof method is one that is one that has been researched pretty, pretty
recently.
There's box breathing, which the Navy SEALs use to help with, you know, when they're putting
their bodies through really, really rigorous physical conditions and mental strain.
We have a lot of research in hospitals about pursed lip breathing, diaphragmatic breathing.
So what it looks like is probably going to be different for each person.
So if you want to be specific to children, which I love, the breathing exercises for
children, a lot of times are games.
Games that involve blowing, practicing, extending your exhale, blowing longer and blowing with
a more controlled rate, inhaling, ideally through the nose.
And lots of exercises to teach children like the sequence, breathe in through your nose,
out through your nose.
Many of the clients that I work with, they have a habit of, especially when they're speaking,
I take a deep breath in through my mouth before I start speaking.
And we want to kind of retrain that habit, get them to breathe in gently through their
nose before they're speaking.
But when we're working with kids, we got to make it fun.
So blowing palm palms across the desk, humming is an example of a great breathing exercise
to help to decongest the nose.
Humming is.
Yeah.
Singing is great.
Is great for kids.
It's great for adults.
It improves bagel tone, improves our mood, lowers our blood pressure.
So breath work can encompass so many different things.
But it's going to be kind of dependent on what the client needs, right?
So if I have a child who comes in with significant nasal congestion, and we do the CBCT and we
just see that there's a lot of inflammation, there's not really any like, you know, significant,
like let's say structural obstructions like the adenoids.
And we would recommend a nasal hygiene regimen and a few breathing exercises that involve
maybe light breath holds and humming, things that they could do in the bathtub, humming
to songs, the happy birthday song, things like that.
And these conservative exercises are very, very helpful in determining if, you know,
if after two, three weeks, maybe longer of consistent practice with these exercises,
if there's no change, if there's no improvement, then we need to look for other help.
We need to look at other things that could be causing this inflammation.
Maybe there's something in the diet, something in the environment.
Maybe we do need a referral to an ENT.
Maybe the nasal hygiene regimen that we offered, we need to step it up and send again, send
a child to an ENT to have like an expert really determine what that requires.
What could possibly be going on?
Yeah.
And you mentioned the CBCT and we're seeing this come up more and more, especially with
Airway Dennis specifically.
So for our parents listening, can you just kind of at a high level explain what that
is and how that helps you as a myofunctional therapist?
This CBCT is really imperative for getting some objective information about how a child
is growing and developing when it comes to the craniofacial complex.
We can see the position of the jaw joint.
We can see the adenoids, the tonsils.
We can see the turbinates within the nose.
All of these things are important in order to determine if there's barriers for potentially
making progress in therapy.
They point to potentially like a root cause, what's causing issues with these children.
The CBCT can also show us tongue posture.
It shows us where the teeth are coming in and if the teeth are coming in correctly.
And this is the importance of early intervention because if we're not keeping an eye on the
baby teeth coming in, then we're not really keeping an eye on the bone growth that's occurring
in our child's craniofacial complex.
My personal story involves, so I grew up in Dover, Delaware and my parents took me to
the dentist as often as they were supposed to probably.
And by the time I was about 10 years old, I had really, really bad crowding.
I had my canines were way impacted.
And at that point I was 10 and my orthodontist at the time, my parents at the time, they
didn't really know what we know kind of now.
And so I had the four premolar extraction and I had braces and my smile is okay, most
people would say.
But we didn't know what we didn't know and we need to keep an eye on these things because
they can affect us into adulthood.
And now I see with my smallish airway and the root cause of all of it was I had a tongue
tie.
My tongue was restricted and I didn't have any speech issues as a kid.
I didn't really have any feeding issues.
I was on a processed food diet, I would say, as a child.
So that probably is what led to, yeah.
So that's probably what led to inadequate bone growth.
And so early intervention is really key and this is kind of another, it's my story just,
it all brings me back to here.
It's like this is why I need to be doing what I'm doing now.
So the clients that I work with now, the kids that I work with now, we don't want to take
your teeth out.
We don't want that at all for you.
We want to make more room for your teeth.
Right, exactly.
And I think that parents love that.
They love hearing that, especially the parents who also have had many teeth extracted and
are learning, hey, maybe that's not the best idea to take out, you know, an adult tooth.
That's doing okay and it's healthy.
We need that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I love that.
And it's so interesting to me how many people, you know, we come across now, children there,
that as adults, here we are sitting here with the repercussions of what, you know, our parents
thought, they were doing the right thing.
Exactly.
And I feel so bad talking about this with my mother.
I really do because I want her to know how appreciative I am of like, I mean, I'm an
only child too.
So, you know, I'm her only son and I love her to death.
I love my smile.
I love everything about it.
I just, you know, I want her to know that, hey, like, this is my mission now.
You know, I'm trying to help people so that they don't have the issues that I'm going
to end up developing, probably, unless I somehow reverse it and, you know, get expansion, which
I will do in the future, or get implants, which I am not too sure about.
But then also, you know, I worry about my mom because she snored my whole life.
She snored my whole life.
Right.
You know, when I look at her now after, I mean, when I look at her mouth now, after
knowing what I know, I'm like, oh, this is, this is why.
There it is.
Yeah.
This is why I had a tongue tie.
Both of my parents had, had pretty thick fascia under their tongues and, you know, to my mom,
she's a, again, lover to death, but I will say mentally inflexible slightly.
So trying to explain to her that a tongue tie can cause all of these, these changes
to a person's breathing and, and swallowing and things is she's not really buying it yet.
But, you know, you got to plant the seed.
That's what I'm doing to start.
Right.
Exactly.
Well, I think there's a lot of parents that are, you know, like us, they're kind of in
this position now and it's like, okay, now what can we do?
But that are even, you know, I have, my children are seven years apart.
So I look at things in my oldest child that I just totally missed.
I had no idea.
And so, you know, here I am trying rapidly to course correct with our sibling.
Just, no, you will not have that.
You're not pulling your teeth.
I mean, five years from now, we're going to be looking back at maybe even this conversation
and changing our minds about some of our, the, the, what we think is fact and what we
think is, is best practice.
And you know, as a parent, you know, you're constantly evolving in your parenting techniques
and, you know, how you can accept all parents are doing the best that they can for their
children.
And, you know, you can, you can only do like you only know what you know.
Right.
Exactly.
So at the end of every episode, I always just like to turn the floor over to our guest
for final thoughts or, you know, anything that you would like to say to parents or any
message you want to leave us with.
Oh man.
Well, I would, I would obviously want to thank you for, for inviting me on your podcast.
And I want to plug, you know, the Center for Aerial and Facial Development in Newark.
Any parent who has concerns about their child's, their sleeping, their breathing, their feeding,
their speech, I would really encourage you to reach out, you know, ask questions and
go with your gut.
How many times I need to tell that to parents, parents know so much what is, what is normal
for their kid and what is not normal.
And, and the parents, they have their, their, their child's, their child's well-being, the
best well-being in mind.
And so I, I like to say go with your gut.
And if you have questions, ask them, look for research, get opinions, get second opinions.
And work with a network of providers.
A myofunctional therapist is relative, is, is somebody who's very rare to come by these
days so far.
But we're hoping that that changes.
But talk to your speech, your speech language pathologist.
Talk to the occupational therapist.
Talk to the teachers in the school about what you're observing with behavior and talk to
your pediatrician.
But ask questions and going with the gut about your feelings is, is just imperative.
Probably at the Center for Airway and Facial Development too, we're just, our mission statement
is to advocate for the overall health and well-being of your child.
We use like a comprehensive and collaborative approach to work on optimal growth and development
through early intervention.
We often call this like our growth guidance program.
So we want to check on during that initial consult how, how the person is, how the child
is coming in and we want to track and we want to help assist and like really promote optimal
growth and development.
So we don't, we don't need to see you at the Pain and Sleep Therapy Center.
Dr. Robinson said his, his goal in his, in his lifetime is to put his own business out
of practice.
If, if he, yeah, to, to early intervention, you know, to fix a lot of these problems that
way he might not have any adults with TMJ or sleep apnea to fix.
I think we're a long way from there, but, but I think that that's an awesome, awesome
goal and it starts with one person.
It starts with one person.
I agree.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
I really appreciate it.
I'm, I'm so thankful for, for having this conversation as well.
Thank you for having me.
Look forward to conversations in the future.
Hopefully.
Absolutely.
Thanks again to today's guest, Daniel Drew for sharing his medical insight and each of
you for listening to today's episode.
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Take care, stay safe and happy breathing everyone.