If your child is 5 to 10 and is learning letter sounds at home, here is the short answer: how you say each sound matters more than most parents realize. Almost all of us learned to say “puh” for P and “buh” for B. That little extra vowel seems harmless, but when your child tries to blend “buh-a-tuh,” the word that comes out is not bat. For a child with dyslexia, who already finds blending hard, that gap can be the difference between “I can read” and “I can’t.” The good news: it is one of the easiest mistakes in reading instruction to fix.
What is the /puh/ problem?
The /puh/ problem is the habit of adding a short “uh” vowel after a consonant sound, so /p/ becomes “puh” and /m/ becomes “muh.” Reading teachers call that extra vowel a schwa. It sneaks in because some sounds are hard to say on their own, and because many of us were taught letter sounds that way as children.
You will hear it everywhere: alphabet songs, toy buttons, some phonics videos. It is so common that most parents never notice they are doing it. That is not a failure on your part. It is just a habit, and habits can be retrained.
Here is what it sounds like side by side:
- M: “muh” (with the extra vowel) versus /mmm/ (lips closed, humming).
- S: “suh” versus /sss/ (a snake hiss, no voice).
- P: “puh” versus /p/ (a tiny puff of air, no voice).
- T: “tuh” versus /t/ (tongue tap, a puff of air).
- B: “buh” versus /b/ (lips pop, as short as you can make it).
Why does the extra “uh” make blending harder?
Blending is pushing individual sounds together into a word. If the sounds your child is holding in their head are “kuh,” “a,” “tuh,” the honest blend is something like “kuh-a-tuh,” and there is no word that sounds like that. Your child has to do an extra, invisible step: strip off the vowels you added before the real word appears.
Most children can do that step eventually. Children with dyslexia, whose core difficulty is with the sounds of language, often cannot do it reliably, and they end up guessing. The National Center on Improving Literacy describes stop sounds as sounds that cannot be held without becoming distorted, and suggests teaching children to “keep their motor running” (keep their voice going) as they move through the sounds of a word (NCIL, How to Use Systematic Phonics Instruction). The Colorado Department of Education’s literacy framework makes the same point: stop sounds are made with one burst of air, and they are hard to say without adding “uh” at the end (Colorado Literacy Framework).
To be honest about the evidence: this is long-standing practitioner guidance from reading specialists and literacy frameworks, not a finding from one big study comparing “puh” families with /p/ families. It is also low-cost advice. Saying the sounds cleanly costs you nothing and removes one obstacle from your child’s path.
Which sounds can you stretch, and which must you clip?
English consonants fall into two practical groups for teaching at home:
- Continuous sounds can be held as long as your breath lasts without changing: /m/, /s/, /f/, /l/, /n/, /r/, /v/, /z/, plus every vowel. Stretch these when you model blending: “mmmaaannn.”
- Stop sounds are made in one quick burst and cannot be held: /b/, /p/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/. Clip these short. For the voiceless ones (/p/, /t/, /k/), think of it as a whisper of air with no voice at all.
That split also tells you which words to start with. NCIL suggests a simple order for early blending practice:
- Words made only of continuous sounds, like man, sun, fan. Your child can stretch every sound and slide them together.
- Words that start with a continuous sound and end with a stop, like mat, sap, sit.
- Words that start with a stop, like top, pan, bed, which are the hardest to blend.
A simple trick for stop sounds at the start of a word: have your child say the stop sound and roll straight into the vowel, so top is practiced as “to-p” rather than “t...o...p.”
What are the 44 sounds, and which come first?
English has 26 letters but roughly 44 sounds, depending on accent and how you count them (Reading Rockets, The 44 Phonemes of English). Some sounds use two letters (sh, ch, th), some letters make more than one sound, and vowels have short and long versions.
You do not need to learn all 44 tonight. A structured, Orton-Gillingham style sequence introduces them a few at a time, starting with:
- a handful of high-use consonants, many of them continuous (m, s, t, f, n, p);
- short vowels, one at a time (many programs begin with short a);
- then the remaining consonants, digraphs like sh and ch, and later long vowels and vowel teams.
The schwa itself is a real sound in English (the “uh” in about or sofa), but it lives in unstressed syllables of longer words. Voyager Sopris suggests introducing it when children start working with multisyllable words, usually by second grade (Voyager Sopris Learning). It does not belong on the end of every consonant. For how the sequence builds from here, see the 7 syllable types and phonemic awareness: how and why.
How do I fix my own letter sounds this week?
Give yourself a week. Five minutes a day is enough to retrain the habit before it shows up in your child’s lessons:
- Hand on your throat. Say /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, /f/. If you feel a buzz, you added voice (and probably an “uh”). These five should be silent puffs or hisses.
- The mirror test for stops. Say /b/ and stop your mouth the instant your lips pop. If your jaw drops after, you said “buh.”
- Check against a model. Our Sound Cards in the Resource Hub play each sound recorded cleanly, so you can listen and copy.
- Record yourself. Say the alphabet sounds into your phone and play it back. You will hear the extra vowels much more easily than you feel them.
- Practice on real words. Blend man, sat, map, top out loud, stretching the continuous sounds and clipping the stops.
Then fold it into your daily 30 to 60 minutes of reading practice. When your child says “puh,” do not correct them with a lecture. Just model it once, cleanly, and move on: “Listen: /p/. Your turn.”
If you would rather follow a script that already has the sounds and their order worked out, the Apricot Tree Academy curriculum is a parent-led dyslexia intervention curriculum built on the Orton-Gillingham approach for children ages 5 to 10, with scripted lessons, workbooks, games and flash cards, plus a companion teacher guide. The workbook on Amazon is an easy place to start. For the bigger picture of teaching at home, read how to teach a dyslexic child to read at home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does it matter if I say "puh" instead of /p/?
When your child blends sounds into a word, any extra vowel you added comes along. "Puh-i-guh" does not sound like pig, so your child has to strip the vowels off before the word appears. Many children manage, but children with dyslexia often find that extra step hard, and they end up guessing instead of blending.
Which letter sounds can be stretched?
Continuous sounds can be held without changing: m, s, f, l, n, r, v and z, plus every vowel. Stretch them when you model blending, like "mmmaaat." Stop sounds such as b, p, t, d, k and g cannot be held, so keep them short and crisp, with no extra vowel on the end.
How many sounds are there in English?
English has 26 letters but roughly 44 sounds, depending on accent and how they are counted. Some sounds use two letters, like sh and th, some letters make more than one sound, and vowels have short and long versions. A structured program introduces them a few at a time, so you never need to learn all 44 at once.
What is the schwa sound, and when should my child learn it?
The schwa is the relaxed "uh" sound in unstressed syllables, like the a in about or sofa. It is a real English sound, but it belongs in longer words, not on the end of every consonant. Many programs introduce it once children start reading multisyllable words, often around second grade.
My child already says "buh" and "tuh." Is it too late to fix?
No. It is a habit, and habits can be retrained at any age. Model the clean sound once, ask your child to copy you, and move on without a lecture. Practice with real words that start with continuous sounds, like man and sat, where clean sounds make blending noticeably easier.
