What do you do when your DC is ready for one nap a day, but still only takes short naps?

[insertcleverusername]

Just that really.

DS is almost 13 months old, some days he will do two naps a day, other days he will only have one and refuse the second one. He's showing most of the signs of being ready to go down to one, but the issue I'm having is that he's still only taking very short naps. I've had this problem ever since he was 4-5 months old. It's very rare that his naps are longer than 50 minutes, sometimes we will get 1 hour 10, but that's the most he will ever do in one go.

What do i do? Anyone else been in this situation? I've watched for tired signs, done proper wind down, nap environment is perfect (pitch black and white noise).

Any advice is appreciated, after 9-10 months of trying everything, it's really stressing me out and getting me down.

If he doesn't need more sleep than 1 nap would give, then he is having enough sleep and does not need longer naps.

If he needs more sleep then 1 (short) nap is giving and you cannot extend the nap, you will need to establish 2 naps. My daughter kept 2 naps a day until being nearly 2 years old.

Thanks for replying; I think I'll just aim for 2 naps a day when he's with me then. Unfortunately when he's at the childminder 3x a week, he only gets 1 nap there.

I had the exact problem - short napper all along then dropped to one nap at 12 months. She did one 35min nap for a while then extended it to 1hr and sometimes longer after a while. She still sometimes naps twice but rarely and only if in the car. It changes all the time and is stressful, isn't it? My issue was how tired and unhappy she was when not sleeping enough but now she seems happy with 11hrs at night and 1hr in the day so I don't mind.

She too only napped once a day at crèche when usually napping twice with me but then it sort of helped her extend the one nap.

Good luck!