My 27MO has had erratic nap habits since January, and I'm tired of it! He used to nap so consistently 11-12.30 until one day in January when he didn't at all. And then didn't nap for 6 weeks. He eventually started napping again, first at nursery and at home only if I took him for a drive. That's still pretty much the case, he naps fine at nursery and at home he only does if I drive him. The naps range from 0-90 minutes and bedtime moves accordingly, but night sleep is inconsistent. On a longer nap day he sometimes won't go to sleep until past 9pm and on no nap days it'll be 6.30-7pm. At night he usually wakes at least once around midnight and comes into our bed. Then he might sleep pretty restfully until 6.30am on a good night, which is our target wake up time. On a bad night he will toss and turn and wake again at 3am and possibly call that morning, or we go through a long battle of crying and him saying he wants to go back in his own bed, but when we're there he gets up again and want's to go back upstairs, or on the sofa, and sometimes he's thrown himself on the floor in the middle of the lounge and looked like he was going to sleep right there. And if we get him back to sleep he'll be up for the day at 5.30-6am.
On average his night sleep is better if he has had a shorter nap or no nap, but if I cap it at 15-20 minutes and tell nursery to do that too (he goes 3 days a week), on day 5 of this he will be exhausted basically from the time he gets up in the morning. I've sometimes thought he might fall asleep in the car on the way to nursery which is 5 minutes away and he goes in at 8am! Or if it's a home day and I plan to go somewhere so that coming home is around nap time he'll fall asleep on the way there instead, at like 9.30am.
He dropped every other nap on his own (early, too), and I've pretty much always just followed his lead and let him sleep when he's tired, so I don't have any experience of implementing schedules or changes to nap habits. Do I just persevere with the little cat naps or no naps and hope he gets used to it? Do I accept he's not ready to drop it and let him have his naps when he needs them and just suck it up when it comes to night sleep?