10 month fights sleep - advice, please?

[Teija]

Our 10 month old son has suddenly become a bad sleeper. He has been in routine from early days and he has thrived with it. From 7 months he started sleeping through the night and he learnt to self sooth and fall asleep on his own after evening routine. Until now he has also had two long sleeps during the day. Suddenly, a week ago he has become a nightmare to put to sleep. Despite our evening routine which involves bath, calming down time, books and song he seems to excited to fall asleep standing in his cot and screaming his head off if we leave him on his own. If we stay to pat him he still doesn't sleep and can start playing. It has taken us the whole evening to get him to sleep. He is tired but is clearly fighting sleep. The same applies to daytime sleep. He used to love his sleep and regularly slept 2h in the morning and the same in the afternoon. Does anyone have any advice what we could do?

I don't have advice on how to 'fix' the problem but it might help to think of it in a different way.. I can totally relate btw, DS has always fought sleep and is a bear when he doesn't get enough but you can't force it and changing my attitude to "there's only so much we can do" helped much more than anything else.

Experts may say otherwise but IME (pfb DS is 18 months) I'd say the behaviour you're describing sounds like your LO doesn't need as much sleep as you're trying to get him to have. Could he be trying to drop a nap? Need a later bedtime? I would experiment a little to see if this is the case. DS recently went from sleeping 7.30pm-7am with 2 x 1.5hr naps to maybe 8.30pm-6.30am with 1 x 1hr nap. It sucks and we tried to change it (2 hours spent trying to 'get' your kid to sleep is no fun) but after a laid back holiday going with the flow it transpired that this is what he needs and he is completely fine with it. Yes he gets less sleep but we are all less stressed - might be worth trying

Given your LO's age it might just be shorter naps he needs? The best advice I can give is take a few days to go with his flow and see what he's trying to tell you... And if it takes more than 30 minutes to get him to sleep, for your own sanity do something else for a bit and try again later

Thanks for such quick replies! I thought too that we could try with dropping the other sleep though I was under the impression that this normally goes when they are well over one year?
We have now put him to bed when he shows the signs of being tired (rubbing his eyes, yawning, no interest). I guess we'll need to try for a few days to see when we manage to get him to sleep.

At the mom I'm completely stressed out about it so it's good advice trying to change my attitude.

Also I wanted to ask about self soothing which has changed too. He used to be able to fall asleep on his own and now needs us to pat him in order to be able to fall asleep. I'm reluctant to start a new (bad) habit of having to be there by his bed until he falls asleep since we were doing so well until recently. Any experiences? Is this related to separation anxiouty?