Ep #98: Pediatric Sleep Apnea: A Simple Solution with Dr. Kalli Hale

Have you ever had one of those moments where you’re like, why didn’t someone tell me this earlier? And you’re kind of upset that no one’s told you this before? I had one of those moments this morning doing this episode for this podcast. So here’s the thing, I’m gonna help you out, and you don’t have to go through this like I did.

If you have a child who snores or is a mouth breather, if you have a child that’s had ADHD symptoms or grinds their teeth, maybe even if they get more cavities than seem reasonable or normal, even if they wet the bed, these can all be symptoms of pediatric sleep apnea. What? Who knew? And here’s the crazy thing, unlike adult sleep apnea, the solution is so ridiculously simple. And I’m sitting here saying, why, why don’t we all hear about this? Why do we know about it?

Well, on the episode today, you’re gonna learn all about it. You’re gonna learn why it’s happening, the impact it has on your kid, and how a very, very simple solution could literally change your kid’s life. It’s amazing. You do not wanna miss this one. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy Neilson: Dr. Hale, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you on today.

Dr. Kalli Hale: Thank you so much. We’re gonna have so much fun.

Amy: I know, I love having a good chat. And the topic we have today, I’m like so curious about because I know people have had relatives with sleep apnea, but I thought it was an adult thing. And so I’m kind of just a little bit blown away, and I wanna know more about this. So before we get started, just tell us a little bit about you and how you’re an expert on this and why we should listen to you. And then, and then let’s talk because I’m very curious to know more about this.

Dr. Hale: I would love to. Yeah, I’m a dentist, obviously. I’m a general dentist in the Houston, Texas area. And I come from a family of dentists, actually. I’m one of five in my immediate family. So we live, eat, and breathe dentistry. And you should be at our Thanksgiving tables because it inevitably comes up and we all, I’m so blessed to be in a family of dentists, and we all have our thing that we love and we do. And so we contribute a lot to each other in the fact that we’re not all doing the same thing. And we go off to different courses and learn things and share them.

I got out of dental school, started working in my parents’ one location at the time and had their hands to hold me, you know, and throughout that, which was, I look back now and I’m like, wow, I was really fortunate because my classmates who got out and had nobody, it was a much different experience as far as how fast they really just integrated dentistry into their life and their practice.

So I started doing a lot of surgery and implants and cosmetic stuff and things that are like, I don’t even do that anymore, which I do love, but it’s just not even on my radar because I started learning little bits at a time. Like you would hear something, and I’d be like, wait, I didn’t learn that in dental school. Or wait, what are they saying about tooth grinding and snoring in kids, or whatever. And I decided one day, I was like, I really need to go take an actual course on this to see, is there more to it, especially just in the sleep apnea realm? So like you said, it’s an adult problem, right? You don’t think of kids having it. We know patients will wear giant CPAP masks on their face. And you’re just thinking your archetype for that is the overweight, struggling male, right?

Amy: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Hale: And that couldn’t be farther from the truth, which was wild to me because we got like 15 minutes in all of dental school and college on like sleep apnea. It was like, if you were obese, you had it. And that was kind of like the end of it. And don’t even get me started on the lack of nutrition stuff that’s covered, but I went to this big CE course really only to learn adults. And just to like figure out like, are the things that I’m dealing with as a dentist with my patients, like breaking their teeth their crown falls off, or they need a root canal or whatever, to linking that to something else that the body was trying to tell them what’s going on.

And I was just like, it was like drinking from a fire hose because these doctors had been treatment planning this stuff and understanding this for longer than I’d even been a dentist. And I’m like, why is this not covered? And then I was really fortunate on one of those, one of those CE courses, to be in the room with like the pioneer for pediatric sleep apnea and treatments. And I was like glued to his face when he was talking because I was literally going there. We had a primarily adult practice at the time that people were getting dentures and implants and surgery and all this really big reconstruction. And I was going there for those people, which I still help. And I love that. But the pediatric part was just like so far off my radar. And I started learning, first of all, all the things that I had said and done wrong, which is humbling.

Amy: So fun, isn’t it? Right. And you’re like, oh, I’m so glad I learned and also, oh, it’s uncomfortable.

Dr. Hale: It is. It is. Yeah. And to just have, I think like anytime I’m talking to dentists that are like, I want to know what you do and like, what is all this? It’s like the ability to recognize that dentistry and medicine is constantly changing. And if you’re not on the forefront of that and paying attention and spending the money to go to CE, all of that, you’re going to be a little behind anyway, like you just are. And practice ownership and dentistry is a whole different podcast I could do because it is all-consuming, really stressful. And you’re like burdened every day with being a business owner more than you are even just like the dentistry.

We always joke in in my family that the dentistry is the easy part, because it is. It’s the hiring and the firing and the management of people and the pay, you know, whatever. So yeah, I fell in love with sleep dentistry. It is all I do. I have as many credentials as you can get in that space, which is not really a thing, you know, like it was just an incredible journey for me. And I have since opened multiple offices in the greater Houston area, specific to pediatric orthodontics and airway treatment for adults and kids. And then we launched Toothpillow a couple of years ago, which was just like, how do I extend my reach? Because you can’t find the services that we do in my office is just like…

Amy: It’s hard to find. Yeah. Cause we’ve never heard of it before. Yeah. So before we get into all that, cause I want to know all of that stuff. But before we get to that, for anyone who doesn’t know what sleep apnea is, you just give like really quick overview of what sleep apnea is and then like, why does it matter? Like, how is it damaging children if we don’t know that? Yeah.

Dr. Hale: So by definition, obstructive sleep apnea is a cessation of breathing. So a complete apnea means like you are not breathing for X amount of seconds. And I’ve seen horrible, I’ve seen over a minute that people were not breathing. And so in the adult space, like when you think sleep apnea, it’s you stop breathing multiple times per hour. In fact, to have a diagnosis, it has to be a minimum of five times per hour that you stop breathing.

Probably the worst one I’ve caught to to date has been in the 70s, like 70 something times per hour, this person stopped breathing. So that explains like what it is physically happening to patients, but we never relate it really to kids. And actually the symptomology between adults and kids is different, which is why it gets missed. And that parents aren’t thinking like, I go to the dentist for that? Like that’s just not, you know what I mean?

Amy: Right. I would not have like made that connection. Yeah. So what is it doing to children? Like does it have the same damaging effects? Because I’ve been learning about the value of sleep and how much this impacts our memory and how much it affects our health and our lifespan and all these different things, right? Sleep is one of the most incredibly important things in the world. And if you’re not, from my understanding of sleep apnea, if you quit breathing, you’re not getting the healthy sleep that you need. Is that true?

Dr. Hale: Correct. Yeah. It totally jacks up your sleep architecture, which is what I think you were trying to say. Like between your deep sleep and your light sleep and then your dreaming state, you just will not have proper architecture. So in adults, they manifest it with fatigue, especially women. Most of the time, our sleep studies don’t look that bad, so we get dismissed. But we will wake up a lot and recover out of those apneas. But the most common would be snoring. Snoring and tooth grinding in adults, I think, are the most two common that we could recognize and be like, oh, yeah, my dentist gave me an eye guard. Yeah, but that’s not treating the root cause. It’s protecting your teeth, but it’s a thing. With kids, it’s totally different. the kids are not fatigued. Well, they are, they are hyperactivity.

Amy: What? Oh my goodness.

Dr. Hale: Hyperactivity, mouth breathing, snoring. They’ll be told like, oh, he just has allergies. And then like, like, yeah, because he’s mouth breathing and then that’s jacking up his sleep, which is just making the tonsils and adenoids swell more. So there’s like, probably like I’ve posted on socials, like five top things or so with kids, it would be mouth breathing, snoring, tooth grinding, and then you start looking dentally at like, do they get a lot of cavities? Like mouth breathing causes rampant cavities. Kids will have all of a sudden they’re like, no, we brush and floss. And like all of a sudden they need six crowns on their teeth. Like what happened?

Amy: Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Hale: Yeah. So the biggest, I think, especially you were mentioning earlier, like you have an audience of like young moms and teachers, like teachers have come to me and been like, this kid is falling asleep in class. Like by the time that’s happening, things are really, really serious and they could still just be in kindergarten or first grade, but they’ve breathed poorly since birth. So it’s just catching up to them. So yeah, I would say those are the big things to be looking out signs and symptoms wise in their students and their little kids at home.

Amy: Wow. Okay. So I’m trying to like catch them all because this is big. I’m like, oh my goodness. Now I need to go rethink all my things for my children. Okay. mouth breathing and snoring and maybe hyperactivity could be one and then like getting extra cavities because their mouth breathing. Okay. Were there any more that I missed? I just like want to make sure.

Dr. Hale: Tooth grinding.

Amy: Tooth grinding. Okay.

Dr. Hale: Yeah. And then the other would be like you getting told your kid needs their tonsils out. Like we should really like have a proper airway evaluation before that is done. And yeah, so we have wonderful orthodontic literature to show that if they undergo expansion properly, dental expansion, that the tonsils and adenoids will go back to normal because you get them breathing through their nose again. Yes.

Amy: What? That’s so wild.

Dr. Hale: I know.

Amy: This is so crazy. Okay, so if you’re noticing a child snoring, which I’m like, oh, I’ve had kids do that, that’s a sign to like talk to your dentist?

Dr. Hale: Yes. Well, honestly, it depends on if they’ve been trained in it. So that is definitely a sign to submit them through virtual on Toothpillow because we can talk about what that looks like too, but it’s my way to globally, in United States right now, make sure that these families get a consultation from somebody trained in this so that they truly understand what their kid needs to do. Yes, yeah.

Amy: Okay, so what do you do to treat like something like this? If you go through this consultation process, you find that your child has child sleep apnea or pediatric sleep apnea, what do you do? Like, how do you treat that?

Dr. Hale: Wonderful question. Yeah, so it depends on the age, for sure. We start as young as three. I’ve actually started at two and a half in my practice. So they wear something, it’s a guided growth appliance. It looks like a football mouth guard to an untrained eye. This is kind of a big one. So they wear these appliances here that look like this. And the company name is Toothpillow, and that’s our kind of dental office in the sky, we like to say. And at three, it will be much smaller than that. But we put this appliance in their mouth at night to start induce nasal breathing. The tongue needs to go up and they need to be breathing through their nose.

We have to, basically to answer your question, we have to get rid of the mouth breathing. And these appliances block the mouth breathing and allow them to start breathing through their nose, but it also opens up their airway. The way that it holds their bite where it should be in a proper position, which if their bite’s in a proper position, they wouldn’t be approved for treatment anyway. And any child that’s snoring or grinding their teeth or any of the symptoms we’ve said, they don’t have proper arch development. Like you need room for all of your teeth.

And so we start them really little with a very conservative, life-changing appliance, but if they come to us too old, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, whatever, which you would think that’s still little, like our generation, like we didn’t get braces till we were 13. It was all about like tooth movements, but it’s all about arch form. Like it is so different. We have to build a proper foundation so that their teeth have room to come in and they’re not getting teeth pulled for braces, which I am vehemently against.

So if they are submitted and we have to deny them virtual care, it’s because it’s so severe that we need to help them find a properly trained airway dentist that will do upper and lower expanders. So that’s like, you know, you’ve got the key and you’re turning it and we start really making skeletal changes that are necessary. And don’t forget the roof of your mouth is the floor of your nose. We’ve got to improve the nasal breathing. We’ve got to make the mouth bigger.

Amy: This is so like interesting. Okay, so talk to me through, because I’m thinking that feels kind of simple if you’re starting early enough. Tt feels like pretty simple intervention. So I’m thinking like, okay, but adults, when they have sleep apnea, it feels like the treatment there is a lot, you know, you’ve got the big like Darth Vader mask and all this stuff, it looks so different. But in children, it really is like that simple? Is it something that we’re doing, right? Like just like a bad habit they picked up that’s mouth breathing or is it literally the structure of their mouth?

Dr. Hale: Great question, it’s the structure. And typically what happens is little kids will start this before the parent even really recognizes it, okay? Like it will be little bits of mouth breathing at 18 months old, two years old. Maybe they have a dairy sensitivity. Maybe they are allergic to something we don’t know really yet. Like something is causing them to not keep their lips closed when they’re little. And also generationally, we’re pretty screwed up too. So there’s a lot genetically that we’re fighting at the same time, like seven or eight generations in, by the introduction of Western diet and softer foods. The muscles are everything. So if you think about it, we give babies literally just squeeze in your mouth pouches of stuff that requires such little effort from the musculature. And one of my favorite books to give at baby shower, if I get invited to a baby shower, they’re getting like oral development tools and the baby led weaning book, okay?

Baby led weaning talks about how to safely introduce harder foods to your child as they’re growing. Because if that tongue is not working hard and those lips are not having to work to chew up the food and swallow it and all of that, then you’re going to get much weaker muscles, which muscle drives bone growth. We have to remember that. So we have to, especially when they’re growing, I mean, definitely when they’re growing, I mean, everything is going to be dictated by the musculature and the breathing. And that is what is so beautiful about these guided growth appliances is like, it is doing really two things, redirecting the muscles and redirecting the breathing.

And that is where, like, if you look on my socials, like you will see before and after cases of kids that you’re like, she did braces on that kid. And I’m like, never touched them once with braces. All we did was use these guided growth appliances. It’s really revolutionary. And I love that you were like, that sounds so simple. Like why wouldn’t everybody do it? And that’s exactly the point of increasing the access to this care by creating a dental office in the sky to be able to manage these kids that there wouldn’t be anybody in 10 hours that would know what I’m talking about.

But for adults, there are a lot of good options aside from the Darth Vader mask. It’s just more costly. And it ranges from surgery to kind of like a night guard, but better, like something that gently brings the lower jaw forward so that they stop snoring at night. The compliance rate for CPAPs is really low and ends up under their bed at some point, and they’re right kind of back where they started.

A big part of my passion for Pediatric OSA, sleep apnea, is I firmly believe we can prevent a lifetime of sleep-disordered breathing if we just do their orthodontics right the first time. And that hasn’t been being done, in my opinion, for the last like 40, 50 years. And so if we can start early, they are healthier adults.

Amy: So that was my next question. Is resolving this issue as a child going to lead to them being less likely to have disordered sleep when they’re adults? So yeah, why isn’t this everywhere?

Dr. Hale: Well, we’re trying, it’s getting worse. I know.

Amy: Oh my gosh. Well, okay, so I have five children, right? Well, I have eight now, but I started with five. I’ve like been raising five since babies and now I have three bonus kids, and it’s super fun. So I have eight. But I’m sitting here and I’m thinking, hey, I knew like from early, early on, all of my children were gonna need braces, right? Because I had major space issues in my mouth growing up. And then the kids, you know, it’s just a thing. But I’m sitting here thinking, my goodness, if it’s just a simple appliance that we could start a little bit earlier, and something that could potentially have helped decrease the chance of braces, which would have been nice.

Dr. Hale: And heart disease and anxiety, and depression. And like, the things that come from sleep apnea…

Amy: Because of sleep?

Dr. Hale: Yes.

Amy: What? That is so crazy.

Dr. Hale: And we haven’t even gotten on the ADHD discussion. It is wild. Like, if you actually look at the research done on kids with sleep-disordered breathing and kids with ADHD, they cannot tell them the difference. It is like a 50% chance of misdiagnosis.

Amy: Wow. Okay. So let me ask you this question…

Dr. Hale: And that’s where I get fired up, because we’re medicating these kids because they’re tired.

Amy: That’s like a really sobering thought. That’s… wow. Let me ask you this question. So when you have a teenager, right, that maybe is being diagnosed with ADHD, and they’ve had braces, do braces do kind of a similar thing to resolve the sleep apnea that the appliance would do, or are those not…

Dr. Hale: Unfortunately, no. And that’s probably one of the most controversial things about all of this is that we’ve been trained in orthodontics to wait until kids are done growing, basically, 12, 13, all the baby teeth fall out before we start cosmetically aligning things. It has nothing to do with the structural components of their breathing and their musculature.

And that’s where I get really frustrated with how hard it’s been to change that narrative because by the time they’re 13 or 14 or 15, the last thing I’m doing is putting braces on their face. I am having to do major skull expansion to even get them anywhere because that’s my windows closing, like between 13 and 15, I’m like, this is so much more expensive as an adult. And you are at the tail end of us being able to get in there as conservatively and cost-effectively as possible.

So unfortunately I’ve taken braces off of kids that had sleep apnea, and we started over. I’ve seen kids that just recently got their braces off, and I had to start over. Like it’s just a difference in philosophy and care for sure. And any child that’s like in braces or recently got them off and is struggling, still mouth breathing, for example, or ADHD or any of that, we do a sleep study right away.

I’m like, let’s get our information. Am I right? Is this sleep apnea and sleep-disordered breathing, or am I not? You know, cause if I’m not fine, go on to the next person to find, to help you. But the fact of the matter is, they’ve all had sleep apnea and they’ve all had beautiful corrections post-treatment. And then that’s really rewarding, but there are thousands of kids that aren’t having that same experience.

Amy: Wow. What’s like the difference? Like give me a pre-treatment, post-treatment kind of thing. It sounds like cosmetically, it’s very similar, right? That if you’re getting braces, it’s like you can’t tell the difference.

Dr. Hale: Doesn’t matter. Yeah.

Amy: Yeah. But like, okay, if we’re looking at some of these symptoms, you know, mouth breathing, you know, whatever, like it’s there, it’s not there. I don’t know that we’re all worried about that, right? But I think the one that really strikes me is that, yeah, that like hyperactivity, ADHD, that’s something. Do we see like a substantial change in that if we’re able to fix this? And you said depression and heart things.

Dr. Hale: Yeah, especially, I mean, the cardiovascular disease and the depression and anxiety is not gonna show up typically until they’re an adult. And they’ve been missed and things have progressed, and they had like a little bit of mouth breathing and apneas that were when they were little, which gets worse as you age. So like by the time they’re in college and stuff, It’s like Adderall and like all the stuff to try to focus. So it really is so important to get that part addressed and done right. But like, I was really good at fillings and cosmetic dentistry. I loved it. My patients loved me. It was a really fun journey for me.

This kind of resolution in kids’ lives, there’s like nothing that compares. Like the number of times I’ve had a mom tell me like, you gave me my kid back. Like, it’s like emotional because we’ll do like lab work pre and post with their physician, and an in-lab sleep study pre and post. And like one of the most recent ones, the lab, the pulmonology guy came out and was like, I don’t, tell the mom, I don’t know what you did, but he doesn’t have sleep apnea anymore. And they don’t, they don’t live in the world that there’s a cure for that.

That’s what I need people to understand. Like they live in the world that you have sleep apnea and you are on a CPAP for the rest of your life, or you are having surgery for that sleep apnea that is gonna haunt you for the rest of your life. And so the fact that those comments are still being made in medicine is like, it’s good that he said that because she immediately was yeah, I went and saw Dr. Hale Hale. We did expanders. You know, like it was like this thing, like y’all told me the only thing I could do was put my kid on a CPAP and take his tonsils out. And we didn’t do either of those things.

But not everybody’s that forward with healthcare, or do they understand, you know, like, you’re just like, oh, this is what they said. So this is what I need to do. But when it comes to ADHD, when they get off those meds and I’m just like, no, it was just my job. Like, and they’re like, no, you don’t understand what life was like before. And they’re right. I know, my kids are little, and we’re not dealing with those symptoms, and they are all in those appliances. My kids have had everything. They’re going to have the biggest jaws, like, ever. So yeah. It’s very humbling.

Amy: Wow. This is like blowing my mind. You told me you’re going to blow my mind, and you did. So is there, I guess this is my question. Is there a downside? Is there any reason to not try to expand a child’s jaw, i you think they have some of these symptoms? Like, is there any reason not to?

Dr. Hale: No, there’s no contraindication in a normal developing child. Now, if you’ve got somebody has cleft lip and cleft palate, that’s a lot more complicated, and they have to have had the surgeries to get everything closed. I mean, we’re kind of getting the weeds, but the guided growth appliances can do zero harm. Zero. And when I’m training dentists in this area, I’m like, listen, if you even suspect the kid needs it, you need to recommend it because you’re not going to, you’re going to hurt them. There’s no way to hurt them with this. The appliances are not moving teeth. They’re not putting pressure on teeth. They are literally allowing the body to do what it needs to do, which is to put the tongue up to the roof of the mouth and breathe through their nose.

And the cosmetics are the side effect of what happens after that. And I have sleep-tested children. I’ve done over thousands of cases at this point. And I’ve sleep tested kids that had a CPAP, like the kids will be given CPAP, like little mini Darth Vader masks. And we would do a night with their CPAP and then a night with the appliance, and their oxygen levels were better with the appliances.

So like, as soon as I had that confirmation early in my career, I was like, I’m unstoppable. There’s nothing anybody will be able to say that stops me from saving these kids because somebody has to, and not everybody knows this. My postdoc education on sleep apnea was so expensive, so expensive. So this is not like just anybody can go do it, basically, you know. But now I teach doctors myself. And I’m like, come on, I will teach you how to do this.

Amy: Let me show you. Let’s fix this for people. Isn’t it amazing when you can find a way, like I can relate to you on some level in a completely different field that I do where I’m like, there is a better way. Like, we can just change lives. Let’s just all do it. Shouldn’t we? Let’s, we learned some stuff. We do that. And when we learn stuff, we just fix it. And let’s do that. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. How common is sleep apnea in kids? Cause I hate to make people freak out and be like, oh no, and worry, and all the things. So I don’t want to cause like any extra stress, but how common is it? How aware should we be of this? And you gave us symptoms to look for, but I’m just wondering.

Dr. Hale: Yeah. As you know, it’s, they say it’s like 80 to 90% of the population, which is like wild to think about. But the beautiful part about it is when you start little, rarely do they have full-blown sleep apnea at that point. It’s sleep-disordered breathing. So, a little mouth breathing, which I very much care about, or a little bit of tooth grinding, or even just cavities. Like, you know, you brush well, your kid doesn’t have a high sugar diet. Like you’re like, or they have siblings who never had an issue. And now you’ve got a sibling that does have an issue with decay. You need to be thinking, is there something systemically going on?

Because when they mouth breathe, the teeth are really dry. It drops the acidity level in the mouth, and the bacteria just proliferate. I mean, it’s just science. And when they put that in and everything’s protected and their saliva stays on the teeth and they breathe through their nose, they stop getting decay. We literally have literature showing that with these appliances, the decay rate plummets. So I’m always like, my Toothpillow babies don’t get cavities. You know, like the parents come in and they’re like, yeah, I just want to make sure there’s no cavities. I’m like, she’s wearing a Toothpillow? Yeah. They’re looking. It’s like, it’s beautiful.

Amy: Oh my goodness. What? So it helps not get cavities and potentially not have to have braces, but mostly your kid gets sleep and all of the things that come from that, which are like life-impacting long-term. Wow. Okay. So what I need to know next, of course, is where to find you. So our listeners can come and check this out. If you have a kid that is snoring, if you’re noticing mouth breathing, if you have a kid with more cavities than you think makes sense, where do we go?

Dr. Hale: Yeah. So our Toothpillow Instagram is Toothpillow_official. We have a lot of good content and stuff on there. I’m The Airway Centered Dentist, all spelled out. If your child is between the age of three and 12, no matter where you are in the United States, you can submit them through there. If they get accepted, fantastic. Doesn’t mean that they might not still need something else in addition, like if they’re older, but that is where you can get a personalized consult with an airway dentist virtually that will get emailed to you. And it is, I mean, we’re talking about a thousand videos a month my doctors are making for families. It is absolutely insane. So that’s where you can get a real, I mean, you submit photos of your child and we’re literally like sharing our screen, showing you exactly what we’re seeing in your child like we would, if I was like, you were in the chair in my office.

Amy: Does it require like a sleep study for each of these kids?

Dr. Hale: It does not. It does not. Nope.

Amy: So you don’t even have to…?

Dr. Hale: No. I don’t have to. Yeah. Because what we’re treating is the musculature and the breathing redirection, right? I’m not technically treating the sleep apnea, even though we know that that’s what we’re fixing, but we just have just to be clear, any kids that we think really need that, we reach out to providers in their area, get them set up with a sleep study at the same time. Cause not every kid’s the same. I’ve got kids that come in, virtually, and we’re like, you know, this is going to be all you ever need. This is going to be beautiful, good for you. And we have some that are on a laundry list of medications already for behavior, for sleep, for mood, for bedwetting. We didn’t even talk about bedwetting. I should have told you bedwetting. That should have been the sixth thing.

And so we will help you to find the right person. And so if somebody is listening to this and their kid’s already 14 or 15, like you’re not going to be approved for virtual care. We just cannot. But DM me, get in touch with the Toothpillow Instagram, whatever you need to do. And we will find you somebody highly qualified, and unfortunately, it can’t just be the braces person on the corner.

Amy: Okay. So we’re going to go there. I’m going to include those links in the show notes too, so that people don’t have to remember how to spell all that out. Cause sometimes, you know, that’s a thing. Thank you so much for coming today and sharing this. I am like wishing we’d had this conversation, you know, a good 15 years ago, but better late than never. And maybe someone else can, I’m like, oh, I might’ve missed one of mine, shoot. I love when we can find solutions to big problems that are simple and easy and so fixable. Oh my goodness, so fixable and solving multiple issues. I just like, this is my happy place. So thank you so much for doing what you do for sure.

Dr. Hale: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I hope people hear it and save their families.

Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on this show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here. You can grab it at PlanningPlaytime.com/special-freebie.

So what this freebie is, I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos. And it is based in play and is so fun. You can use dot markers with it. You can use Q-tip painting. You could use circled cereal. There’s all kinds of options. You can print it out today and get started. Just head over to PlanningPlaytime.com/special-freebie, and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website PlanningPlaytime.com. See you next week.