Mason Motz is a little boy from Texas who had trouble saying full sentences for the first five years of his life. His parents thought he was non-verbal until a dentist performed a procedure that revealed that the child was simply tongue-tied!

Mason’s parents attributed the fact that he had trouble talking in complete sentences to Sotos syndrome, a hereditary condition that leaves people with distinctive facial features, overgrowth in childhood, learning disabilities, and delayed development of mental and movement abilities.

“Since birth, he’s had delays and issues,” said Meredith Motz, the child’s mother.

“He’s been in speech therapy since he was a little over 1 year old,” Meredith continued. “Sleeping was always stressful. He would stop breathing. He had trouble eating and swallowing; every single meal we would have to remove something that was choking him. He didn’t get the nutrition he needed. His teeth started having problems.”

It was only when Meredith took Mason to Dr. Amy Luedemann-Lazar of Kidstown Dental in Katy that she learned what the real problem with her son was.

When Luedemann-Lazar sedated Mason, she quickly found that the boy was tongue-tied.

“We did detect a tongue-tie,” she said. “Mason was not nonverbal; he was just unable to speak. He had been in speech therapy for years and no one had ever checked under his tongue.”

The formal name for tongue-tie is ankyloglossia, a condition that develops at birth when an unusually short, thick band of tissue tethers the bottom of the tongue’s tip to the floor of the mouth. Luedemann-Lazar was able to undo the tongue-tie by performing a non-invasive laser treatment on Mason.

“Within 12 hours, he was talking and it was amazing,” Meredith said. “It’s like night and day. He doesn’t have choking episodes anymore; he’s eating different types of food. He’s behaving much better at school. His behavior was a problem, because he was getting poor quality of sleep at night, he was constantly tired and was not able to express himself. He doesn’t snore anymore. He doesn’t have sleep apnea anymore.”

We’re so glad Mason’s story had a happy ending! Find out more about this in the video below!