2 year old bed time struggles

[Hmum0fthree]

My little boy turned 2 in October, since birth he has always slept really well, had the odd occasion of a difficult night but nothing major, goes down 7-7 and was having a 2 hour nap up until recently which he has started fighting but still has up to an hour!

The last week bedtime has been horrendous, to the point last night DH took him down until 11, at first I thought it was because he isn't tired because when we bring him up later on he happily lays down and goes to sleep, but today he had his nap in his cot 1.5 hours woke up at 1.30ish so by 7:30 he should have been exhausted! He has been fighting me for an hour!!

I decided tonight enough was enough so we are doing controlled crying, I have an older DD who has never slept (now diagnosed asd) and have been under parenting teams so know all the advise and tips there are from that.

Is it a sleep regression? Or is he just testing the boundaries! It doesn't help I'm pregnant and struggling to bend over his cot etc

There are a lot of development leaps around that age - he could be processing something by and having a hard time sleeping. Maybe linked to language and speech? Or he might be ready to start dropping naps? (My DS only needed a nap every other day from around 20months and had dropped them completely by 2.5 on days he napped he wouldn’t sleep until 8:30ish. Once all naps were dropped, his bedtime was much earlier.)

Going through similar here. DD is 28 months and since around the time she turned 2, sleep has been awful. She used to sleep through the night... and I miss it !!!! Over Xmas she had chicken pox and got used to coming to sleep with me at 2am, and now it's become a habit. The interrupted nights are killing me, because she doesn't just go quickly back to sleep, she always chats and uses any excuse to not go back to sleep. Then eventually she goes to sleep and will sleep in and we'll be late for nursery. And me late for work. Bedtime is hard work too. Lots of negotiation, crying, running around. I thought newborn stage was hard, but fuck me, this is a whole different ball game. She still naps as i think she needs it, but i never let her nap longer than 1.5h and never past 3pm. But maybe we should drop the nap altogether? Arrrrrghhh, I don't know

Up from 3:30am and still not settling back to sleep. I'm losing my mind

I would try dropping the nap at this age
If my DD had so much as 30 min nap at this age she would be awake for Hours in the evening

It was from 2-2.5ish I think that I had to keep her awake all day if I wanted her to sleep in the evenings