Why is my 2.5 yo spending ages to go to sleep?

[Chocolatemintshake]

He’s been a great sleeper since sleep training at 18 months but lately has been spending up to an hour chatting to himself in his cot. It was around 830 when he went to sleep last night. Then he woke at 520 and only napped for an hour (12-1) and is still babbling away to himself.

I am fairly sure he is tired but isn’t giving in - developmental leap?

Does he have anything like music or a light show? I found those helped my DD to drift off.

Have you tried dropping his lunchtime nap? I remember this happening with both of mine around the same age so I stopped their lunchtime nap which really helped (after a week or so to adjust).

He’s likely aging out of the lunchtime nap. It can be a bumpy transition though where they struggle to get through the day without a sleep but are horrors at bedtime if they do sleep. I’d be inclined to drop it and bring bedtime forwards if necessary, or if he really can’t make it then cap it to 30 minutes- we do this with DS who is 2 years 3 months.

Mine dropped his nap for good at 2 years 9 months, so could be that he doesn't need a nap anymore or needs it capped. Mine used to be awake until 9.30pm sometimes before he dropped his nap, which was definitely way too late.

The chatting to himself is quite common, though, and might be linked to your DS gaining more language skills. See this Wikipedia article on "crib talk". I loved listening on the monitor to the crazy things my DS would say

Could be a leap or may be time to drop the nap. My daughter did this quite early (19 months) but we found that if she'd napped at nursery she was taking until 9:30ish to go to sleep. We had to ask nursery not to put her down for one (they were fab about it and let her go and read with the pre schoolers) and it made all the difference to her nighttime sleep.