Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi everyone,

I know I'm only in my 4th day with braces, but this is the ONLY problem that I have with my braces.
PROBLEM: My speech is very much affected by my braces, I have a "loud" lisp, especially the letters C-F-S.
My questions are:
1. Is it because I have alot of gaps?
[You can see my pics. on "braces stories"]
2. Or is this something that gets better as the time goes by?
3. Or do I just get used to it, but doesn't get better?

I hope somebody out there can help me.

Bye...Marvin

Things will get better as time goes by, I have had bad problems with my speech for the first few weeks. After maybe a week and a half I was back to my old self!

SDFD TSchott

You will get better and you will not have a lisp. I am not surprised anymore everytime the ortho puts something new in my mouth ,how quickly my speech goes back to normal. I have an expander on my lower teeth. The first 7-10 days I had a lisp . It was funny the first 2-3 days but after that I wanted to cry out of frustration. If I tried to say " I said so" I would actually pronounce it " I thaid tho" Thorry=sorry, Thix=six
The best thing to do is to pronounce the difficult words slowly.I noticed that this helped me a lot.


Gennel

Hi Marvin,

I have had braces for only 2 days now and I have a small lisp but I find as I get used to having braces it gets better. Not to mention friends of mine who have had braces have had lisps and first that disappeared as they had them longer.

It's just something that happens that eventually gets better.

During the first 24 after I got braces, some people told me I had the slightest lisp, but it went away pretty fast. I think your tongue just gets confused. Don't worry about it ^^

I'm with ya about the speech! I've had my braces 2 and a half weeks and I'm having trouble with a lisp. Karen, I copied that exercise and put it on my desktop as reference for practice. Thanks for posting it!

This too, will pass....

Jembrace

My lisp was really bad for the first couple of weeks. It has steadily improved until it disappeared completely (perhaps after one month?). So I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I had a bit of the lisp troubles too and sometimes people who are close to me notice a slight change in my speech right after an adjustment (teeth move so there's new sores in the mouth while everything settles). Like many other aspects of braces, most people don't notice the lisp unless you draw attention to it.

I find wax helped in the friction areas that prevented me from talking and soon your lips will feel comfortable around them. For me, it seemed hard to believe I would ever be used to braces and the lump they created under my lip and then suddenly, I was okay with them.

It won't last forever, but like other people, I did feel conscious of having a lisp and can detect it in myself (everybody else swears there's no change.) When I'm sore it's much worse.

I worked in radio so am very aware of my voice. There is one exercise you can do to acclimate your mouth to weirdness and that's to learn to speak around an obstacle. Put something like a pencil in your mouth - straight across - then talk. Read aloud or something. Try your best to speak clearly. Now take it out and speak. Note the improvement?

This has been the thing I wasn't ready for. I just didn't expect my speech to be so messed up. In my case I think it's also affected by the bite turbos, but it's annoying anyway. For me, I'm happy I went with the metal brackets - at least people can see why I sound like an idiot.

JDub

The lisping thing was definitely something that was unexpected, but it does go away. Well, mine isn't fully gone yet, but it has gotten a lot better since I first got braced. Reading things outloud helped a lot.

thanks for the passage KK!

I, like most people, am more conscious of it than others, especially when I am leaving messages for clients. I have to force myself to speak slower to get all the s and f words out.. good thing I guess, since I tend to speak too fast...

good luck MarvinBrace!

I'm only a week and half into having the lower braces on. I did have a bit of a lisp initially. Though the bright side for me..I had been stuttering a lot prior and I haven't noticed myself stutter anymore. I might be focusing more on my words than before.

The lisp I had noticed that my lips just weren't in the right position for whatever word I was saying. It has gone away a bit now. Every now and then it'll happen though.

We'll see how it is with getting the uppers on in Feb.

My guidance counselor has a slight studdering problem w/ her braces, she getts mad sumtimes when she can't talk right. I remember at orientation she before she started talking in the microphone she said "forgive me if I studder it's because of the braces."

Uhg.
I have a lisp, and people have problems to understand me. I am not speaking my native language, so there was some problems already before. But, now it is very bad. I think the lisp is because of my retainer.