Teaching a 20 month old to self-settle?

[PeazlyPops]

DS is 20 months old and still needs to be rocked/shushed/patted to sleep.

It used to take half and hour, max, to get him to fall asleep, however then the 18 month sleep regression started and he went from sleeping through, to waking every few hours.

Thankfully he's mostly sleeping through the night again, although some nights he might wake once, but will fall asleep pretty much straight away if we pat his bum.

The problem now is that it's taking an hour to an hour and a half to get him to fall askeep.

DH is still upstairs now trying to settle him, and we're getting really fed up with the amount of time it's taking.

We try not to engage too much with him, but it seems like just when he's about to drop off, a thought will pop into his head that he has to tell us, and then he's awake again trying to talk.

Any tips please?

Bumping in desperation!

My DS is 20mo as well and I just leave him to it at bedtime, if I am in the room he just wants to talk to me/poke me in the eye/throw bunny at me etc...

I think maybe introduce a bunny equivalent and a story at bedtime, kiss goodnight and leave to it. We use white noise, go in and check when upset and repeat as necessary. He does take an age to settle sometimes, but at least I'm sitting on the sofa, not sitting in the dark! Good luck

Thanks, I'll give that a try. It's so frustrating, I need a little but of time to unwind myself before going to bed!