Alternative to CC for 1 YO who doesn't want to sleep

[KingfisherBlue]

DS turns one this month. At various times in his life, he has fallen asleep by himself with no tears, cried a little in his cot and then slept, or been cuddled to sleep. But for the past few weeks he's been screaming and screaming when we put him down for naps or at night.

He has a normal bedtime routine: bath, milk, teeth, story and cuddle, then into his cot. Before naps he has a story and a cuddle.

We've ruled out all the obvious possible problems: undertired, overtired, teething, separation anxiety etc. and the only thing we can think of is that he doesn't want to sleep. (The only thing that stops the screaming is if we take him out of the bedroom.) He naps with no fuss at nursery on exactly the same routine.

So the only solution I can think of is controlled crying, but he works himself into such a state that I'm worried he'll make himself ill. Does anyone have any other suggestions before we bite the bullet?

If you are doing absolutely the same thing as nursery does at nap time, I honestly think you need to keep doing what you're doing and let him cry for a few minutes.
Sorry, maybe not want you want to hear!

for the past few weeks...

What was his sleep like before this change? What was it like in May and at the start of June, for example.

@Enidblyton, the problem is, it's not just a few minutes. At the moment we tend to give cuddles after a bit of crying and bedtime can take over an hour!

@FATE, it was a bit disrupted when he learned to stand up in his cot at around 9 months, but we could always cuddle him to sleep. (If we left him in his cot he would stand up and cry.) He's also been ill and teething recently, which was when bedtime became truly awful, but he's definitely over that now. Between the standing-up phase and the illness, he was just starting to settle independently in his cot again.

You're cuddling him to sleep?
When did that change?

To answer the question in your op, your basic assumption that leaving baby to cry is somehow necessary, an unpleasant thing but that has to be endured for the greater good - is absolutely not how I would view your situation.

It's difficult to offer any advice without more understanding of your baby's sleep hygiene. But I would say baby is crying for a reason and if that was my baby I would just keep going until I figured out and rectified whatever upset baby is trying to communicate to me. Solving the is due might involve some crying (although I would avoid that if possible) but I would never ignore that communication. And certainly not see ignoring the crying as necessary and the only option.

That's just me though.

You're cuddling him to sleep?
When did that change?

From about 3-7 months he fell asleep by himself with little or minimal crying most nights. (Naps have always been harder.) But he did this with very little pushing from us - when we felt he could do it, we just left him to it. If on any given day he couldn't, he's always had cuddles. Things like shush-patting or lying down next to him have never helped.

Then from about 7 months onwards there were loads of things that made it harder for him to get to sleep (teething, travel, illness etc.) so we've held him until he fell asleep a lot more often and he never had a chance to get fully back to independent sleep before the next problem came along.

We've never minded cuddling him to sleep and would happily keep doing it, but the problem is, it's not working any more because he screams even in our arms and twists around and refuses to be held in any position where he might possibly fall asleep!

Baby is crying for a reason and if that was my baby I would just keep going until I figured out and rectified whatever upset baby is trying to communicate to me.

I totally agree - the problem is that the only thing left that we can think of is that he's upset because he doesn't want to sleep, so anything we do to help him to sleep seems to make the upset worse!

I was going to say you just need to persevere with the crying a bit. However, if he's screaming etc once you've picked him up that suggests something is wrong. But it's strange he does it at nursery. How do they do it at nursery?

I'm not sure if I think he's not tired. If they're not tired they should perk up and play with you when you pick them up not carry on screaming?

At nursery they put him in the cot and he goes to sleep

We have made some progress in the past couple of days, so I thought I'd update in case it's helpful for anyone else. After what people said on here and some useful advice I read on other threads, we thought a bit more about what we were trying to achieve and what messages we were giving about sleep - basically that we are happy to help DS to sleep in any way necessary, but we are not going to facilitate him fighting sleep!

So the first night, when he started to resist by wriggling and crying, we left him in his cot for a bit, then went back after a few minutes to pick him up and soothe him. This went on for about an hour, with several cycles of crying and cuddles. I eventually put him down almost asleep and he whimpered a bit, then dropped off and slept through the night.

Then last night, he cried for five minutes, calmed down with one more cuddle, went into his cot drowsy and fell asleep by himself!

Nap time this morning has taken a bit longer, but the crying was more like grumbling and again he fell asleep in the cot with me in the room, but not saying or doing anything.

So we have had some success, and over the three nights there has actually been less crying involved than when we were trying to cuddle him as he screamed!

Thank you to everyone who commented.