Strange speech development

[yabbadabbadee]

My 4.5 year old has seen SALT a couple of times now, but because he can understand instructions they keep sending him away for another 12 months each time.
His speech has got much better in the past 6 months, but he still struggles with certain letters, especially "L" like lolly is yo-yee, "g" so garden is darden. Apparently this is age appropriate so I'm not hugely worried.
I'm more concerned that he has funny ways of saying things. It's always "my" instead of "I" so "my want one" and "my do it"
It's also things like "to-for" instead of "before" and "a-morrow" instead of tomorrow and "a-hind" for "behind"
And "a" instead of "the"
So "I need to go to a shops"
He also gets him, her, he, she mixed up. He calls his sister him and his football coach who is a boy her.
Do you think this speech pattern is anything to worry about?

I just don't want his school friends to start noticing and picking on him for talking strangely.

Not an expert but I work in pre school and sounds slightly behind average but not outside range of 'normal'. We have a child who is 5 in Sept who says 'yoyee' who is v advanced in other areas. A-morrow, a- hind etc are all v normal. There only slightly strange thing is the he) she but I'm sure it'll clear up. Keep his confidence up in other areas of possible or maybe he's delayed in all areas, which may be harder for him. My son was similar (couldn't write his name at the end of reception, and 'failed' y1 phonics test despite excellent teaching) and is now 15 and he is fine, going to do well enough in gcse's for a levels. He gets extra time due to dyspraxia, although I personally think it's more than just dyspraxia. Anyway, my point is over the long term the main thing is to not make your DS feel weird, abnormal, slow etc. I'm sure he'll grow out of it. Lots of nursery rhymes and tongue twisters are great for speech development rather than correcting him specifically.

@MerryMarigold thank you. That's really helpful.
He is also 5 in September and for one of the oldest in his class I really worry about his speech.
Preschool aren't massively concerned as he speaks enough to be understood!
I'll just
Wait and see I guess!!!

These are all fairly age appropriate. Just model back the correct way of saying it - without asking him to repeat it after you. You could make an 'All about me book' with him with photos of things he likes and caption them so 'I like pizza' etc.
Same with the speech sounds - just model back, so he says 'A dod' you say 'yes a big dog' with a slight emphasis on the 'g' sound. Good luck!

@pontiouspilates thank you. That's reassuring. I do try and model the correct speech as SALT suggested this, but 2 years later and still no change!!!
I'll persevere.

My 7 year old did the he / she thing at that age. His speech is fine now but he was a very late talker, and really struggled with speech at your son's age. I worried too. It all turned out fine in the end.

It's just practice, try to get him to talk more and model back the right way. My DS is like this but 4, had a speech delay and now gets a bit mixed up, especially on tenses

DS This today I play football
Me Today you played football, that's nice. Who did you play with?
DS Them ellow hair two boy
Me The blonde haired twin boys. Do you know their names?
DS ......

This NHS a speech sounds chart might help
www.kentcht.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Childrens-SLT-speech-sound-development.pdf