We are looking for parents and schools management representatives, who are aware of mouth breathing problem and its scale, who are willing to collaborate.
🚩Mouth breathing is a red flag 🚩. It isn’t just a silly habit. It’s an early sign of future health problems. Parents often neglect when their child breathe through the mouth. Or they simply don’t know what that means. Lack of awareness undermines child’s health and performance at school.
It may lead to:
At night
- Snoring [ref. 1]
- Restless or disturbed sleep [ref. 2],[ref. 3]
- Sleep-disordered breathing [ref. 3]
Long term effects
- Craniofacial and dental development [ref. 4][ref. 5]
- Problems associated with chronic nasal obstruction [ref. 8]
- When sleep-disordered breathing is present: difficulties with attention, behavior and cognitive function [ref. 3] [ref. 7]
How many children breathe through the mouth?
When I see schoolmates of my daughters (9 & 12 years old), many of them breathe through the mouth. Not only when running, playing or talking. Often at rest, when watching TV or doing homework. Unfortunately, we don’t know the real prevalence of mouth breathing in chilldren. This is underresearched. There was one small study in Brazil in 2008. The researchers wanted to determine the prevalence of mouth breathing among children aged 3 to 9 years living in the urban districts. The prevalence of mouth breathing was found to be 55%, (204 children out of 370) [ref. 6].
Mouth Breathing Campaign
We are launching a simple but powerful campaign, that has potential to improve many lives. Therefore we are looking for mouth-breathing-aware campaign partners: parents, teachers, school directors who would be willing to help reaching out to parents who need to know this.
Target audience for this campaign: Parents with children between the ages of 5 and 12.
Example activities:
- Sharing print-outs and digital informative non-branded materials about mouth breathing among children.
- Organising experts’ workshops.
What we don’t want to do:
- We don’t want to scare anyone.
- We are not going to spam parents e-mails or WhatsApp groups.
- We are not going to collect data, conduct surveys. We stay this time at the human level only.
* All efforts of RespireLabs in the scope of this campaign are pro bono. We are not going to advertise or brand anything, nor put any logos/labels on printed materials and other communication that goes beyond this website.
We are looking for parents and teachers
Would you like to join our campaign? Let us know your ideas: kdabrowski [at] respirelabs.com
References
- Kukwa W, Goch M, Wasik M, et al. Prevalence of upper respiratory tract infections in habitually snoring and mouth breathing children. Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol. 2018;108:123–127. doi:10.1016/j.ijporl.2018.02.021. PubMed
- Kalaskar RR, Kalaskar AR, Naik SS, et al. Sleep difficulties and symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children with mouth breathing. J Indian Soc Pedod Prev Dent. 2021;39(4):401–407. PubMed Central
- Primarti RS et al. Mouth breathing and its impact on sleep breathing disorders in children. 2025. PubMed
- Grande ES et al. Mouth breathing and craniofacial development in children. 2026. PubMed
- Lin L, et al. Effects of mouth breathing on facial skeletal development in children: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Oral Rehabil. 2021. PubMed
- Abreu RR, Rocha RL, Lamounier JA, Guerra AF. Prevalence of mouth breathing among children. J Pediatr (Rio J).2008;84(5):467–470. PubMed
- Menzies B et al. Neurocognitive outcomes of children with sleep disordered breathing: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Sleep Med Rev. 2022;64:101659. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2022.101659. PubMed
- Abreu RR, Rocha RL, Lamounier JA, Guerra AF. Etiology, clinical manifestations and concurrent findings in mouth-breathing children. J Pediatr (Rio J). 2008;84(6):529–535. PubMed
