Abstract: PURPOSE: To investigate the difference of parent's cognition of children's orofacial myofunctional therapy (OMT) and its influencing factors, to provide reference for children's OMT. METHODS: Self-designed questionnaire was used to investigate the basic information and related problems of 98 parents whose children received OMT. SPSS 22.0 software package was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: The parents' total cognition of OMT was relatively low (23.47%). The cognition of malocclusion (68.4%) was significantly different from that of orofacial dysfunction (26.5%), the therapeutic significance of OMT (28.6%) and the attitude of specific treatment of orofacial myofunctional therapy (23.5%) (P<0.001). Parents with different backgrounds had different recognition of OMT: the cognitive degree of parents over 50 years old was low(13.33%), while the cognitive degree of the parents with high educational background was high (48.08%). There was no significant difference in cognition among different gender, occupation and family monthly income. High recognition had good compliance and cooperation. Comparing with low recognition, the difference from high recognition on compliance and cooperation was significant(P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: OMT is a long-term treatment process, which needs children's perseverance and active cooperation. The curative effect mainly depends on the children's compliance and cooperation. Higher awareness is the premise of good compliance and cooperation. To improve the recognition of OMT and avoid occurrence of malocclusion, it is necessary to strengthen education of OMT, especially for parents with special backgrounds.

Key words: Malocclusion, Orofacial myofunctional disorder, Muscle function training, Cognitive investigation