Is it time for the nap to go? Please help

[Elisabeth3468]

My son is 2 years 5 months and has had nap regressions in the past but has generally slept about 1-2 hours a day in between 12-2ish. Then times do vary depending on a lot of factors and we do not have a rigid routine but bed time is generally about half 8.
For the past 2 weeks he's been fighting naps. But still seems so tired. 2 days he's completely skipped his nap and is falling asleep at 5pm and I have to literally do every song and dance to keep him awake. Then I try and get him to bed about 7pm and he won't sleep!! Then he finally fell asleep at 8pm.
The days he does nap then he refuses to sleep till 9/10ish (unless the nap has only been 20/30 mins).
The naps are getting later and later and later. Today it's 3pm and still no nap but he's in a hideous mood and clearly exhausted.
What do I do?
It's painful trying to keep him awake and I still feel like he needs the nap but he just fights it so much. I hate the battle.

MY DS dropped his nap around the same age. He was at nursery and just refused to have it, so we used to just have to try and keep him awake in the car on the way home, then do bedtime as early as possible after tea. At weekends we forced a nap by taking him for a walk in his buggy - don't know if that would work for you? It was fine for us as we had to walk the dog anyway. When we eventually stopped weekend naps too we replaced it with 'quiet time', which was sitting reading stories with him in his room for 45 minutes or so to at least have a bit of a rest.

Both of mine had dropped their naps by 2.5yo. I found that they needed a nap every couple of days for a month or two until they got used to it. I think you just have to push through the stage. Unlike PP, neither of mine were interested in quiet time but I'd pop the TV on sometimes to get a breather!

It took my daughter about 4 months to drop her nap. At first she was ok as long as she didn't skip 2 naps in a row and had 4-5 naps a week then she had 2-3 naps a week then we had a month of a nap a week. We had a month where she only napped in nursery days (Mon, Tues, Thu and Fri) then a month when it was only on home days once at the weekend and on a Wednesday.

On no nap days we made the bed time routine a bit shorter and on nap days we went up 15 minutes later and added a jigsaw and extra story to the bedtime so she went to bed about 30-45 minutes later but the routine was similar.

This was a year ago and she still often has a 10-15 minute nap on the drive to swimming as it's quite a windy route. It doesn't impact her sleep in the evening any more