Muscle Tone Information for Parents
Here are the references I promised a couple of weeks ago about muscle tone and how it affects development in toddlers. Some sites are specific to a particular diagnosis, and some are very general.
For great basic information about muscle tone for parents as well as information regarding “w” sitting, gross motor activities to target low muscle tone at home, and discussion about whether low or high muscle tone can be “fixed,” listen to show #8 from “Teach Me To Talk with Laura and Kate.”
http://www.atotalapproach.com/docs/PT.pdf General info - Also information about toe walking
http://www.omill.org/articles/LowMuscleTone.html Very general info for parents
http://members.tripod.com/msweiner-ivil/hypotonia/id9.html PT article - tone defined
http://www.cdadc.com/ds/hypotonia.htm Down Syndrome site
http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-does-low-muscle-tone-hyptonia-mean.html Asperbers site
http://www.speechtx.com/cpalsy/defin.htm Cerebral Palsy info
Excerpt from this site explaining how low muscle tone can impact speech-language development -
“Speech difficulties can result from hypotonia. Low-tone children learn to speak later than their peers, even if they appear to understand a large vocabulary, or can obey simple commands. Difficulties with muscles in the mouth and jaw can inhibit proper pronunciation, and discourage experimentation with word combination and sentence-forming. Since the hypotonic condition is actually an objective manifestation of some underlying disorder, it can be difficult to determine whether speech delays are a result of poor muscle tone, or some other neurological condition, such as mental retardation, that may be associated with the cause of hypotonia.”
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