Is 22 months too young for rapid return?

[WreckOfTheHesperus]

Am galloping towards the end of my tether...
DD, who was always a fab, self-settling sleeper, went off the rails a couple of months ago.

She is in a cot bed with the side down (she was climbing / falling out) and a guard rail, and there is a stair gate on her bedroom door.

She refuses to try to go to sleep unless I'm in the room with her, sitting on the floor. I wait until she starts snoring (which can take 30 or so mins, or not at all during the daytime), then try to tiptoe out, but she always wakes up and gets hysterical at my desertion and demands that I come back.

Have tried standing outside the door with the door variously open and closed, but she keeps sitting up or getting up to make sure that I'm still there.

If I leave her to cry she either just howls for a long time and works herself up, or has also started going quiet and just sitting on the floor by the stairgate and reading...

I am spending all of my evenings locked in this battle at the mo, and am starting to dread bedtimes; is she too young for rapid return? Or is there anything else I can try?

Thanks for any advice

My DS did this. For the first year he slept in our bed and then he wouldn't fall asleep in his own bed (our own fault I know). He wouldn't do anything where you gave him any attention as he knew to keep going as we would go back. It ended up that we told him we'd be in the room next door (our bedroom) and left him with door open till he cried/shouted/yelled/stomped etc himself to sleep. He shared a room with DD so wasn't on own. She was slightly deaf at the time so slept through it all.

He now and for the last 6 months goes to bed at 6.30-7pm and sleeps through till 6am.

He use to just love the attention of going back and when he realised we wouldn't he went to bed. It did take a few weeks/months of all evening/early night being awake or taking it in turns by DH and I.

Good luck

thanks paranoidmother; resolved to be tough last night, but she went to sleep like a dream - celebrated we though that we'd cracked it.

Turns out that she was tired because she was ill, and was very sick at midnight - sigh, back to the drawing board....