'Tongue-Tied' Texas Boy Speaks For First Time After Laser Dental Treatment
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KATY, Texas (CBS Local) -- You'd never know it now, but Mason Motz could barely utter a word... until very recently.
The Texas boy was born with Sotos syndrome, a disorder characterized by a distinctive facial appearance, overgrowth in childhood and learning disabilities.
But it didn't quite explain why he couldn't speak.
Mason had been in speech therapy since the age of 1, but nothing was really working.
"He probably had a five-word vocabulary and we were just looking at alternative means of communication," Mason's mother, Meredith Motz, told Inside Edition.
A breakthrough finally came during a trip to see Dr. Amy Luedemann-Lazar at Kidstown Dental in Katy, Texas, some 45 minutes west of Houston.
While Mason was sedated, Luedemann-Lazar discovered that Mason was biologically tongue-tied, a condition formally known as ankyloglossia.
"When you are in your in utero, in your mom, you have web fingers and web toes. When you're developing your tongue as part of the core of your mouth, it separates similarity as part of the process and a tongue-tie is simply an incomplete separation," said Luedemann-Lazar.
Luedemann-Lazar performed a non-invasive Biolase laser treatment to release Mason's tongue-tie and the results were almost immediate.
"We took him home that evening and he then started talking about -- [I'm] hungry, I'm thirsty, can we watch a movie -- like blowing our minds with these full sentences for the first time," said Meredith Motz. "It was just shocking."
In addition, many physical ailments Mason had long struggled with have become manageable or have all but disappeared. He no longer has problems sleeping or choking while eating.