While the tongue is remarkably able to compensate and many children have no speech impediments due to short lingual frenulum, others may. Evaluation may be needed if more than half of a three-year-old child’s speech is not understood outside of the family circle.

Speech sound development is not fully contingent upon adequate range of motion of the articulators. In this case, even if the frenectomy is performed for speech sounds, he still is not using his anatomy to correctly produce these target phonemes and a SLP referral is warranted.