The main toy was called a chewy tube which is a rubber thing with lots of different bumps and textures that they chew on. We slowly introduced it, then slowly got it further into her mouth (to start with she wouldn't put anything in her mouth past her front teeth) then slowly applied more pressure to the gums and cheeks and tongue. We got that toy from the speechie, not sure how you get your hands on one otherwise but perhaps google it. Other than that we got anything long and thin and with different bumps and lumps on it, the things called something like training toothbrush or my first toothbrush were good.....kind of a double ended toothbrush with different shaped rubber 'heads' on each end that have little rubber ridges, or bumps, or bristles etc.

Of course this is what our speechie got for us for our DDs particular issue, different kids would have different things that would be most effective I would think.

Yeah the speech pathologist thing surprised me also, given that at the time DD was about 7-8 months old and speech wasn't really on the agenda at that stage. But as it is all mouth related, eating is part of their domain also.