Mouth breathing is exactly what it sounds like: breathing through the mouth instead of the nose, out of habit.

In kid words

Take a slow breath in through just your nose, then try one through just your mouth. If your mouth ends up doing most of the work, even when you're not talking or eating, that's called mouth breathing. Lots of kids do it sometimes, and it's simply something worth mentioning at your next checkup.

The parent version

Mouth breathing describes breathing routinely through the mouth rather than the nose, outside of talking, eating or exercising. Occasional mouth breathing, like during a stuffy-nose cold, is ordinary and not something to read into. Habitual mouth breathing, meaning it's the usual pattern rather than the exception, is the version mainstream sources suggest is worth a mention.

A mouth that stays open for much of the day tends to run drier, and dry mouth is a detail your pediatric dentist pays attention to, since saliva plays a role in keeping a mouth healthy. Mainstream guidance treats habitual mouth breathing as worth flagging to both a dentist and a pediatrician, since either one might notice something the other hasn't. It isn't something to self-diagnose from watching your child sleep. Ask your pediatric dentist what they're seeing at your child's next visit.

Where you might hear it at our office

Dry mouth and general growth are both part of what gets checked at a routine cleaning and exam, so habitual mouth breathing is often a natural thread to pull on during that visit. If our team notices anything worth a second set of eyes, that's exactly when a conversation with your child's pediatrician gets suggested too, since the two of you working from the same observation tends to help more than either one guessing alone.

If your child brought home another unfamiliar word recently, the rest of the Kids' Dental Dictionary is right here to help.

Related words

Dry mouth. Growth check. Habit.