Confusion of th and f

[User24689]

Hi all.

My 5yo DD has always struggled to pronounce th and says f instead which I know is common.

We have encouraged/ modelled the correct pronunciation of th and she can make the sound and now occasionally gets it right in speech.

What I'm discovering now though is that as her writing progresses she is mixing up th and f all the time. Eg she will write 'free' for 'three' but also 'thairy' for 'fairy'. When I've corrected this in her work she says 'but how do you know which 'f' it is?'

First, is this a common issue at this age?

Second, any tips on addressing it?

I thought about emailing her teacher but think she's probably got enough on this week so thought I'd ask on here first!

DD had a speech condition where she struggled to get the correct sounds. She still has issues with th and f. All I can say is practice practice practice, and when you're reading together really exaggerate the sounds - tongue right out for th, front teeth over the lip for f. Obviously read as much together as you can. She'll get there in the end.

Thank you!

Interestingly I had a very intelligent and highly educated tutor at University who used to confuse these two sounds. So he would say for example, "thirstly, please turn to page two" but also "Margaret Fatcher". He was otherwise very well spoken.

It made me wonder if this is a specific issue some people struggle with rather than just immature speech she will grow out of.

I will do as you advise and exaggerate when reading for now and continue to correct in writing.

Print off pictures of f and th things and get her to say and sort - after you model the sound - do for 10 mins a day - get her to match word to picture so she can see the sound written down. Try different games and she will soon pick it up.

It’s tricky because of her pronunciation but you should be able to feel the difference as you say the sound. Tongue on teeth for ‘th’ and air coming from between your lips for ‘f’.

It's not unusual

At 5 that's completely normal. Just correct her - as a PP said, get her to put her hand in front of her mouth to feel the difference.

It's a normal up to 7.5

Thanks so much for the advice/ ideas!

This is interesting. My DD has the same problem - she says she can't hear the difference between the two sounds.

She's almost 8 now, so past the 7.5 mark @underneaththeash mentioned. We asked her teacher back in Reception, who said not to worry at that age, but I guess now is the age where we should start worrying!

I'll start trying to practice the sounds with her. Anything else we should do at this point?

Has she had a hearing test?

I would say this is normal at 5. My ds did the same but never makes this mistake anymore (he's 7 and in year 3). Just keep reinforcing the difference and gently correcting her each time and she'll get it.

It's a very late developing sound distinction - and if they're still acquiring the th sound - substituting it with f is a perfectly normal developmental process. Can take up to around age 7 to become fully acquired (I'm taking that milestone from Barbara Dodd - the age given varies slightly if you look around the different experts) - you might find it appears consistently in newly learnt words first, then gradually trickles down into words she's been saying a lot.

If she can't hear the difference you need to work on that first (and get hearing checked - some types of mild hearing loss can hit certain frequencies and fricative sounds are one particular group that can get caught up in this well - which are sounds like - you've guessed it f, v, th etc). Anything that involves sorting words into f and th would be a help - but it sounds like she genuinely can't fully hear the difference.

My 7.5 year old still struggles with the voiced and unvoiced th sounds - but she has still a slight delay in speech sounds and she can hear the difference between the sounds - so I don't worry too much about it.

(I'm assuming you're not in an area where the local accent has a tendency to do this naturally by the way)

My dd does this, doesn't help her father (doesn't live with him but does now see him. She didn't during the language development stage though so I'm not sure I can blame him) does too. Thinking about it so does the entire rest of his adult family. They are from north London so it is how they pronounce a lot of the words beginning with 'th' (fought instead of thought for example) but that doesn't really explain why they would spell 'few' as 'thew' they are also mostly all dyslexic as is dd so maybe a bit of that. Dd also doesn't pronounce her Rs well and would say wabbit instead of rabbit which I've seen sneaking in to her writing too however that must be extra confusing for her seeing many R words do actually begin with W. I think it's just a case of constant reminders. Dd was meant to be referred to speech therapy but lockdowns have delayed that massively

It's very normal at her age and unlikely to be due to some kind of problem.

It's also normal for them to spell phonetically, which includes mistakes transliterated from an accent or immature pronunciation, this is just due to the way phonics is taught. It's not a problem and will sort out in time :) The priority is to encourage them to write as much as possible without self consciousness over spelling getting in the way, as spelling can be improved later but confidence often can't.

My husband does this still. He has a pretty bad tounge tie

I feel like I spent a lot of my kids childhoods saying “ it’s a th word not a f word” or vice versa. They suss it out when they learn how to spell.

I found Jolly Phonics was really useful for this. Unless she can hear the difference/see the difference then she is unlikely to get the spelling correct (or at least not 100%).

So for "th" we would stick out tongue out.
For "f" we would bite our bottom lip a bit. (Doesn't give totally accurate sound but helps).

DD had a hearing test in Reception. Would that have picked up any problems?

I'll start doing some sessions matching pictures and words. And start picking her up on it when she does the wrong sound. I don't want her to get self-conscious and defensive about it though!

As well as confusing 'f' and 'th', she sometimes substitutes 'g' eg she pronounces the word 'the' as 'guh' but I suspect that's habit.

This isn't the accent where we live, and there aren't any adults in her life who confuse the sounds. I'd kind of stopped noticing it, tbh - it's just part of her! But it sounds like this really is the time to try to fix it.