Speech development: the "th" sound

[TheRedQueen]

Could someone please advise when (approximately) a child can be expected to pronounce the "th" sound correctly, i.e. as in words like think, teeth, etc.?

I have a 2.2 year old daughter who speaks extremely well for her age and used to be able to make the "th" sound very nicely. However, in recent weeks she has suddenly started to say "teef" rather than teeth and "fink" rather than think, etc.

Had we lived in the UK, I might have thought that she was just copying other people she had heard mispronounce the sound. However, we live abroad and (a) she only really hears English from my husband and I (and we both say the "th" sound correctly) and (b) although some locals here do speak to her in English and cannot themselves pronounce the English "th", their attempts usually sound either like a "t" or a "s" (but not like an "f").

I am therefore unclear why she has suddenly started to misprounounce the sound in this way and whether it is a matter for concern or not.

Any help/advice much appreciated!

my dd had a perfect th sound as a toddler, despite being speech delayed until age 3.
Now aged 5 she has nearly got it back
I think it is one of the later sounds. And it can come and go

My 4yr old DD is just starting to say Th now that she has started school.

I don't know when children generally pronounce the "th" sound correctly, but DS is 4 and doesn't. DD is 2.2 and doesn't either. I'm not sure when I would worry, but I haven't worried yet.

That's probably not much help to you, but there may well be someone along who knows more than me .

the 'th' sound is normally not pronounced correctly until a child is 8

is it possible you have only just noticed that she is saying teef rather than teeth because you are just used to her talking and hear the sounds where it is not

Either way I wouldn't worry about it .. sometimes they get things one month and then forget about it the next as they go on to work out the next challenge

if she has already done it, she'll start to do it again

I think that it's later than you would imagine. I read a little about it, because dd is now 4.5 and instead of saying "then", "them", "their", "that" and "the" she says "yen","yem", "yeir", "at" and "ye" IWSWIM. Also says teef, fought instead of thought and so on.

I am hoping that it's something she'll grow out of. And will be interested in the replies you get, too!

please do not read into previous post that I do not believe that she was pronouncing 'th' .. it was a question rather than a suspicion IYSWIM

anyway don't worry

I did'nt realise that my dd was saying "le" instead of "the" until she started learning to read at school.

She was over 4 1/2 and learnt pretty quickly to say it correctly. Still pronounces lots of words incorrectly now at 6 1/2!

Many thanks for your replies everyone - they are a great reassurance. We have decided to simply echo the correct pronunciation back to her (i.e. DD: "Mummy brushing teef"; Mummy: "That's right. Mummy is brushing her teeth") when she gets it wrong, but to otherwise just let her get on with it for the time being.

Twiglett - you are right to question whether we had not just been mishearing her in the first place - it's easily done. However, she did definitely used to say it correctly. We have a lovely bit of video of her chatting to her Uncle Keith and clearly calling him Uncle Teeth (the K was the problem then! Mind you, it was worse for his wife, Sue. She got called Auntie Soup!)

I think it's a classic devlopment curve: do X correctly, start thinking about it and get it wrong then get it right again. Can't rmemebr what it's called though...

DS1 is 3 next week, and is teef, vat, vose, fink etc tec tec

I think it's quite swewet actuially.

Ds1 was never able to say 'th' until recentlty, wheresas dd was able to at first but - presumably - copied him and now at 5 still cannot. When ds1 befgan spelling he suddenly realised that it was important to say 'th' not 'f' in order to be able to spell the word correctly. He now has both the desire and the ability to say 'th', whereas dd has the desire (copying her big brother again LOL) but not the ability. They both also lisp.

Though on the subject of ability, it's very funny to hear ds1 trying to say 'feathers' . Or spelling 'fart' 'thart' .

U-shaped curve:

A widely discussed topic in the psycholinguistics of morphology and phonology is the ?U-shaped curve,? a developmental phenomenon whereby children first implement an inflectional mapping without error (when they inflect at all), then produce overregularization errors like goed, then gradually achieve adult performance.

this is morphology rather than phonetics, but could she be generalising from other words ending in -f rather than -th?

My DS1 (3.10) uses th instead of v and f so I have the opposite problem- I hve been told that it is all normal though!

DD1 is 7.6 and still can't say the 'th' sound unless she does the tongue-poking thing. I do try to correct it sometimes, but I'm not overly bothered by it. DD2 is two years younger, but says it just fine!

looks at Effie's post

looks again

reads slowly word by word

reads slowly syllable by syllable

ahhhhh .. yes indeed