2-1 nap transition nightmare :(

[andymcpandy]

Hi

My son will be 17 months old on November 5th.  He's never been a great napper but a champ at clocking in night sleep (I always utilized early bedtime for crap short naps). 

After having signs of 2-1 for 2-3 weeks, I decided to push him for 1 nap.  We've been on 1 nap (with the occasional 2 nap if we're out in the car around that time) for almost a month.  The problem I'm having is that he will not sleep more than 1 hour and 10 minutes.  He's never slept more than an hour for each nap even when he was on 4/3/2 naps.  The naps are either 30 minutes, 40 minutes or an hour.

Sometimes on his one nap of the day he only sleeps 30 minutes!  We'll try for a catnap between 3-4, but he REFUSES to take it.  We put him down for bed at 5:30PM on these days! 

For months when he was younger I would try leaving him in the crib for 90 minutes but he never went back to sleep.  My husband won't let me do that now, because it didn't work when he was younger and he doesn't like hearing him crying so hard for so long at this age.  My husband was traummed during sleep training.

My son goes to sleep by himself (since 5 months old), has no sleep props (except his lovey).

His schedule is this:

Wake Up - 6:15 AM (But I don't take him out of the crib until 6:45)
Nap - 11:00AM (I tried 11:30 but that put him in an overtired loop that I JUST got out of and I find that 11:00 AM seems to work well for him.  He goes down easy and is asleep within 5 minutes_
Bedtime - 5:30-5:45.

I'm basically rushing home from work and putting him straight to bed so he can make up the lack of naps in night sleep which he does.

It's been almost a month now and I cannot imagine him napping more than 30 min- to an hour 10 minutes!  I know it takes time for the one nap to lengthen but he's never napped more than an hour so I can't imagine this happening.  The early bedtime is killing me as my husband comes home from work later than I do and never gets to see him.

Any tips on what to do?  Even when he was napping at 11:30 he only napped AT MOST an hour and 10 minutes. 

[lauradj]

Hi there!  We'll try to help however we can.  I do need to say right off that bat that we do not support CIO, which is what you used earlier for your LO.  It is very traumatizing for your child and ultimately, is not usually long-term effective, as all you've taught your child is that you will not come when they need you.
The 2-1 transition can be a slow process, and varies for each child.  With DS1, my aim was a nap from 1-3 so I kept pushing his morning A time by 15 mins every 4/5 days, and I chose to cap the morning nap and give him a nice long stretch in the afternoon, as that's when he really needed it.  I remember that once he made it to 11:30, he did a massive leap and stayed awake until noon.  From there it was much easier.  However, while this whole transition was going on, bed times were a little wonky as we tried to do early bed times whenever things went sideways.  We finally decided to make bed time the same consistent time it always had been, and let that, and morning wake up, be his constants.  When we made that commitment, it made a huge difference within 3 days.  He'd be pretty darn tired by bed time (7pm, eyes shut) but he slept until 7am, and started napping better during the day. 
We have a 2-1 transition group in the Naps section of our sleep board and you will find lots of parents going through the same phase as you.  Sometimes it's just nice to have other people in the same sticky spot