Say goodbye to gross, gag-inducing, wooden tongue depressors. The first time you try Tic-Tong Tongue Depressors you will wonder WHY YOU HAVEN’T BEEN USING THESE WITH YOUR PATIENTS FOR YOUR ENTIRE CAREER. And then if you’re like me, you’ll get mad and think, “why didn’t I think of this?”

SmileMakers offers flavored tongue depressors that taste and smell like that fun-dip powder you knew and loved as a child. As soon as I opened the bag of Tic-Tong, I instantly was taken back to the grocery store checkout aisle of Tom Thumb begging my mom to buy those candy powdered packets with those fun white dipping “sticks.” And that’s when all of the “AHA!” moments of potential child life interventions AND mom hacks started flooding my brain.

These latex free, sugar free and BPA free sticks of Tutti Frutti sweetness will become your new best friend. Give your patient some control and let them pick which color they want: red, pink, yellow, green or blue. All depressors feature a cute animal friend at one end and come individually wrapped in a 40-count pouch, which is excellent so that you don’t have to dispose of the unused items after you leave the room. #savingwaste When you order from SmileMakers, you will get 160 sticks per order for only $54.99. That is less than $0.35 per stick.

Could you use these sticks for a normal throat check or dental visit? Absolutely. But the opportunities are endless. Here are a few of my ideas and I’d love to hear from you about how you could use these fruit-flavored tongue depressors.

● Your patient is NPO and can’t eat. There is not a lot worse than trying to support and provide an alternative focus for a pre-school or school-ager who can’t eat for one reason or another. Let them pick one or two of these and soothe their desire to have something in their mouth.
● Your patient is having an uncomfortable or painful procedure. We usually go to auditory, tactile, or visual stimulation to provide distraction during these times. Use these candy-flavored sticks to have additional olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) stimuli in your tool belt.
● Share them with your PT/OT/ST team to have them use as a part of their developmental/sensory system assessments.
● These are so inexpensive that you could offer these to siblings as a “treat” while they wait for or visit their hospitalized sibling.
● Gross medicine? See if these can help distract them from that “bitter or bad taste” in their mouth. I’d use them prior to the bad-tasting medicine and afterward as well.

I highly recommend these useful, cost-efficient tongue depressors to be a part of your distraction bag, developmental assessment, and tool in your toolbelt as you go throughout the hospital.