Teaching TH in Isolation & Syllables

In this lesson, you will be learning how to teach your child ‘TH’ in isolation, or all by itself, and in syllables.

 Most kids who are mispronouncing ‘TH’, are producing ‘F’ or ‘D’ instead.   For instance, ‘thumb’ might sound like ‘fum.’  ‘Brother’ might sound like ‘brudder’.

You may be wondering whether your child is the right age to begin working on this sound.  Some people may tell you “Just wait, they’ll grow out of it,” while others may urge you to begin working on it right away.

I believe in working with children as soon as possible so they don’t develop bad speech habits.

As you can see by the attached image, this chart puts ‘TH’ at about age 7 or 8 for most children.  In other words, by age eight, 90% of children can produce the ‘TH’ sound correctly in speech.

The ‘TH’ sound is one of the easier ones to teach children because it is so visible.  You can see exactly where the tongue is supposed to go, and whether or not it is in the right place. 

To begin, tell your child that the ‘TH’ sound is made when you put your tongue just  slightly between your teeth, mouth mostly closed, and blow.   Now when I say blow, I don’t mean the way you’d blow on hot soup or blow up a balloon.  You don’t want the mouth to pucker at all.  You are just forcing air out past the tongue and lips.

Model that for her.   Then, ask her to try.  Make sure she blows softly, and doesn’t spit.   To lighten the mood, you might tell your child, “Hey, this is the only time you get to stick out your tongue at me!”  If you have a mouth hand puppet like ‘Mr. Mouth’ (my name for it), you can use it to help show the correct tongue placement.   

 If your child sticks out her tongue too far, instruct her to just barely put it between her teeth instead and blow.  Model that for her.  Make sure she blows softly, and doesn’t spit!

That is the ‘soft TH’ sound.   There are two types of ‘TH’ sounds: 

Voiced ‘TH’ just means that your voice is on, as in the word ‘The’.  You can tell if it’s voiced by putting your hand on your throat —  you will be able to feel it vibrate as you make the ‘TH’ sound in isolation.

The unvoiced ‘TH’ is like whispering the sound.   Your voice is not on, so when you put your hand on your neck it will not vibrate.  You will hear air coming out, but no other sound.

Have your child put her hand on her neck and try both types of ‘TH’.  This is a good teaching moment because there are many other sounds that have voiced and unvoiced versions (T & D, S & Z, P & B, K & G, F & V).

Make sure that your child doesn’t stick out her tongue too far.  It’s ok if she does that in the beginning while she’s learning, but don’t let it become a habit.  

Sticking the tongue out too far will make a slushier sound and will also slow down speech.  Think about playing the piano – if your fingers are high up off the keyboard as you’re playing, it will slow you down.  You want to keep them close to the keys so they have less distance to travel. 

It’s the same thing with speech – the shorter the distance the tongue has to move, the faster and more articulate your speech can be.

If your child continues to produce ‘F’ by mistake, hand her a mirror and let her look at her mouth.  Tell her not to let her teeth touch her lower lip.   

Keep the mood light because if the habit is strong, she might get easily frustrated.  I’ve found it’s helpful to immediately  make an exaggerated surprised, “Oh!” as soon as she starts to make an ‘F’ sound.  I open my eyes wide and raise my eyebrows, making a silly face.

This can help them for two reasons – the first is that humor helps them to relax so they can stay in a good mood and keep trying.  The second is that the sudden noise as soon as they do the wrong movement will startle them enough to hopefully break the habit if you continue to do it.

If your child is producing ‘D’ instead of the voiced ‘TH’,  it is an issue of correcting tongue placement and tongue pressure.

Tell her to move her tongue farther forward and down, so that it’s slightly between the teeth.  The ‘D’ sound is produced with the tongue up above the ridge of the upper teeth, so it needs to come down for ‘TH’.

Also, the ‘D’ sound is a ‘stop’ sound, which means the air is being constricted between two surfaces before it can forcefully escape, making a louder, harsher sound.  The two surfaces are the tongue and the alveolar ridge, or the area right where your top teeth meet the inside of your mouth.   Your tongue pushes hard against that surface.

With the voiced ‘TH’ sound, your tongue doesn’t push very hard between your upper and lower teeth.  It’s a very light contact.  So in addition to moving the tongue down between the teeth, you can tell your child to make it ‘softer’ and ‘lighter’.  

Remember, her voice will be on for the voiced ‘TH’, as in ‘The’, vs the unvoiced ‘TH’, as in ‘thumb’.   Sometimes the voiced ‘TH’ might tickle a bit as it makes the upper lip vibrate.  That’s one way to tell her the difference.   You can also say that the voiced ‘TH’  sounds kind of like a bee buzzing.

Continue to have her practice making both types of ‘TH’ sounds in isolation.  She might catch on quickly, or it might take a few days.  Be flexible and take breaks as needed.

When your child can produce ‘TH’ in isolation with 80% accuracy, you can start on syllables, like ‘Thah, Thay, Thee, Thye, Tho, and Thoo.’   Your child should practice these with the soft unvoiced ‘TH’ as well as the louder voiced ‘TH’.

For instance, you can start with the unvoiced ‘TH’ in ‘Thah’. It might help to use a mirror in front of both of you.  That way she can watch you and compare it to herself at the same time. At least give your child a hand mirror to look at.

Make sure your child barely puts her tongue between her teeth and blows softly to make the initial ‘TH’ followed by the ‘ah’ sound.  Try to make it fun and reward your child for any effort to produce the sound correctly.  Practice this until she can successfully produce it 3 times.

Then you can move on to the next syllable, ‘Thay’, and do the same thing.  You may find that some syllables will be easier for your child to produce, and that’s OK. You can come back to the harder ones later.

Move on to as many syllables as you can, trying to get as many correct productions as possible.

If your child gets discouraged, switch to a different activity, like trying to name as many items in the room that begin with ‘TH’ as possible. You could also read a storybook that has a lot of ‘TH’ words in it.

When your child can produce ‘TH’ syllables correctly 80% of the time, you can move on to Initial ‘TH’ in words, in Lesson 2!