Advice on 5 yr olds speech

[bear73]

Hi

My Godson's mother has asked me to see if I can find out if the problems her son is having are normal for his age.

He is 5 1/2 and has problems saying "th" he says it as "f" and also always writes "F" when writing "th" words like thin and things.

He has had problems with hearing in the past, gromits I think but she says his ears have been fine for a while now.

I think she just wants to know if this is normal for his age or if it is because of his ears.

Any advice or feedback for me to pass on would be much appreciated.

Many thanks
sh
x

My DS1 has normal hearing, as far as I know. He confuses 'f' with 'th', and now he's starting to read, I keep having to point out the difference. I think this is absolutely and utterly normal.

Oh, and I get him to see and hear the difference by clearly showing him the difference between the two, enunciating wildly and talking about where teeth/tongue/etc have to be, to make the different sounds.

The phonics caption for the 'th' sound is a child with it's tongue out while saying it.

Ds1 can say th but only if you very deliberately show him with your tongue and get him to repeat it back. In normal conversation he reverts to f or v (he's 5.8 btw). Spelling, I think he would use either. He's failed one hearing test at school, passed the retest, I would say he has intermittent hearing problems depending on how much wax there is (it can be really disgusting - dripping out of his ear!).

Very common in my class on Year 1s.

my dd is the same age and has never really thought about it, but I think the th sound is quite hard for her

she is okay with the then etc but things, thin, teeth etc are not perfectly pronounced

I am not too worried about it, she does try.

Very common in this age group. Apparently voiced and unvoiced 'th' ( the different sounds in 'the' and 'thin') often don't come until 7 or 8. DS2, who is 5.5, can say the sounds if we practise, but doesn't use them in normal speech - though when he is reading now he often puts them in and is really trying with them.

DS1 was still substituting 'f', 'v' and sometimes 'd' at 7. I just did some homemade exercises with him - made him say , eg, 10 words with the sounds once a day, and then occasionally during the day would correct something he had said. He started self-correcting and within a month or so was using the sounds correctly.

I agree with everyone else that saying "th" as "f" is perfectly normal at that age. Indeed, where I am (in Sarfff Lunnon) quite a few grown-ups do it too. Could your godson be picking up a local accent?