What factors influence healthy facial development in children?
What will my baby look like? – Prof. John Mew
In other words, what will my baby’s face look like?
As an expectant parent, you can hardly wait to finally see your baby’s little face on the ultrasound and marvel at how beautiful it is! Evolutionarily, we all carry the potential for our face, jaw, and teeth to develop optimally — a result that others (even subconsciously) perceive as beautiful and harmonious. However, this evolutionarily favorable facial development can be undermined by destructive factors, such as unfavorable environmental influences or poorly functioning habits.
Mew, who is now over 90 years old, goes through all the points where this process can go wrong: posture, tongue, tongue-tie, lifestyle, breastfeeding, and more. He discusses the effect of breastfeeding on facial development in detail. He devotes an entire chapter to Mewing — yes, you guessed right, it’s named after him. He covers healthy facial development and swallowing, providing dozens of pictures to illustrate these topics, and at the end of each chapter you’ll find references as well.
Mew is a forward-thinking orthodontist whose method is called Orthotropics, or Forwardontics. This is, of course, completely at odds with conventional orthodontic methodology in several respects, which is why he gets heavily criticized — but his cases speak for themselves. I’ve seen quite a few pictures where the patient ended up avoiding jaw surgery altogether. (Pretty good, right? 🙂 ) So the final chapter is about his method, which his son, Dr. Mike Mew, continues to develop. There are tons of before-and-after pictures, and not just of children’s cases but adults’ too. He also draws attention to the downsides of popular orthodontic procedures.