Our current bedtime routine is bath, stories and then DS usually asks us to lie with him and give him cuddles until he falls asleep.
If he is really tired the stories and cuddles phase can take just 15-20 mins, which is fine, but frequently it takes 30 mins to an hour before he will fall asleep. Sometimes it can be over an hour.
He can go to sleep by himself when he has a nap at nursery (he still needs to sleep during the day and as long as it is for less than an hour it does not have an effect on his bedtime).
I would like to move to a situation where he gets 15 mins or so of stories and then goes to sleep by himself.
He does genuinely seem to find it difficult to sleep sometimes- he will lie with his eyes shut but say that he can't sleep (I tell him that it is fine if he isn't ready for sleep yet but he needs to lie quietly and have a rest), but other times he seems to find it difficult to switch off and will wriggle about in his bed and chatter away to himself. He is pretty high energy generally.
Any ideas of how to progress him to settling himself to sleep? I would like to make some
progress by April when I am due with DC2.