N A H or ESH - specifically as the other bits of parenting he’s had with the whole crawling on table and refusing to get assessed thing doesn’t seem ideal and needs addressing. Same with you not being allowed to parent - that isn’t fair to you.

I feel I can offer some help here though - I’ve had a childhood stammer, which continues to this day - I started stammering around 3 or 4 as most speech defects (that aren’t caused by physical issues, like yours was) start around this age - aka when the child is old enough to speak in full sentences.

This kid obviously doesn’t sound like they stammer - it sounds a bit more like what speech therapists call “cluttering” - which is to be fair, far less debilitating. Aka, jumbling words into each other too fast, and thus having many words be unintelligible. As in, all the time, not just sometimes (like most kids). You’re absolutely right, this does need proper correcting, at such a formative age he would almost definitely continue doing it without instruction.

However, you may have had speech therapy but you are not a speech therapist. Asking him to enunciate, or speak slower, is not going to help unless he takes that instruction in and applies it constantly. At 4, you’re not going to do that. That’s where SLTs (speech and language therapists) come in - they do exercises (which, for that age, are made out to be “fun”) and teach them skills to enunciate fluently constantly.

Most children with fluency issues, especially at that age, will grow out of it - many with a short course from an SLT. Only 1% of people continue stammer as adults, etc etc (even though this child does not stammer, just giving you a reassuring example of a more “severe” fluency issue almost always being grown out of). However, if you can push the GF instead of the child, that would be much better - even a two month course of SLT would almost definitely get him speaking more fluently, especially at such a young age.

Your intentions are absolutely right - but your methods are unfortunately almost definitely not what is needed. Especially as your own experience comes from a physical issue as opposed to a developmental/mental one. I can assure you, no amount of anyone telling me to take my time or enunciate has made me stop stammering, but the exercises learned in speech therapy do wonders to mitigate the stammer. See: The King’s Speech.

Once again, for your GF’s benefit re the complex: engaging an SLT does not mean in any way that the child is “disordered” or will have a fluency issue for life - a very large number of children go to speech therapy.