8 month old fights sleep

[Mrspopp2017]

My 8 month old sleeps all night, 7 - 7.30pm until I wake him up again in the morning at 7am.
He's only taking 2 daytime naps at the moment one at 9.30am in which he'll sleep for half an hour and not much more and another at 1 - 2pm where I take him out in the pram and he can sleep anywhere from 1 - 3 hours.

The problem is he fights his morning nap. He's clearly tired rubbing his eyes etc. but he will roll around his cot, throw his dummy out and then just scream and cry until he falls asleep, we have to put on white noise, shush him and stroke his face to settle him but he still fights. We've tried sleep training but it doesn't work, he just stays awake the whole time.

It's not a problem to us that we have to settle him for his naps but I am wondering if its normal for him to be like that? I don't want him to have a negative association with sleep or be doing the wrong thing settling him to sleep even when he's fighting it.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

His natural sleep pressure will be lower for the morning nap. His body clock encourages sleep at bedtime. The pram movement encourages sleep in the afternoon.

I would be inclined to sleep train for both naps, so he learns to go from awake yo asleep in the cot, without movement, for all daytime naps.

Have you tried putting him down a bit later for his morning nap? My DD would fight her morning nap until I started putting her down a bit later.

@Vicky1989x not matter what time i put him down I get the same reaction. Interestingly he plays up more when my husband is home, he's a shift worker so his home time is not particularly consistent