Why do children stick their tongues out when they are focused?

If your child is one of those who sticks out his tongue while he is writing or while he is concentrating, do not be surprised, because this very curious gesture is more common than you think and then we will tell you why it happens.

According to research, it is usually produced by a mental mechanism that allows you to focus attention and eliminate distracting stimuli.

The tongue is an organ with too many nerve endings, producing different stimuli that are constantly sent to the brain, that is why the child, when placing the tongue between the teeth, eliminates these stimuli, leaving the neurons without distractors, managing to execute the task in a precise.

This makes us see the connection that exists between the language and the brain, not only to send the information of what is thought so that the language expresses perfect words, but when removing the language, data is provided to the communication system that includes the hand, mouth and tongue actions so that they work spontaneously and synchronously, since apparently this gesture is usually a reflection between language and motor skills. Being considered to take out the language as a component of the communication system that should not be pointed out, much less limited. This gesture is also activated when the brain works at its maximum capacity, usually in manual and communicative tasks that require a lot of attention and precision.

Another curious fact, according to research carried out, children tend to stick their tongues to the right side, this basically happens because that side of the mouth is controlled by the left hemisphere, which is the dominant one in language.

For this reason, this gesture should not be repressed, since as mentioned above, it allows the child to achieve greater concentration in their activities and it is something normal that happens in children.

Does this happen in adults too?

According to studies as the brain develops, it allows us to have control of all the functions of our body, which means that any manual and communicative activity can be carried out without activating the gesture of unconsciously sticking out the tongue.

In some adults this action can occur unconsciously, but when noticing it, it is usually repressed out of shame to be seen.