Welcome Jessica! I am sorry you had a bad experience on other parenting forums. I think you'll find that there are an infinite variety of young children's sleep needs as well as an infinite variety of parenting styles, and no one combination is any more correct than any other combo. One year old is a really typical time for young children's sleeping patterns to change up a bit as their need for sleep lessens during the day - for a lot of kids that's when they drop their second (usually morning) daytime nap, but for a child who's never needed much sleep it might mean a lot of challenges with an afternoon nap. Our ds never *ever* slept through the night and lived for years on much less sleep than anyone else in the family. If he napped during the day, he was up past 11:30 at night but still woke up bouncy and perky and full of life at, um, 5 am - and that was simply who he was (and still is) - he doesn't need much sleep.
I am not sure why you were flamed? Was it because you were looking for suggestions to help you get your dd to sleep, or was it because you were following her lead or was it just because you let off a bit of a vent from being way tired yourself? Or something else? If you can tell us a bit more about what you're looking for, we can offer up some advice. If you're trying to get your dd back on an afternoon schedule, these are the things that (sort of) worked for us when our kids were going through similar challenges -
* Move bedtime back to a later start time but continue to wake your dd up at the same time in the morning (ie, reduce the amount of time she's sleeping at night).
* Drive her around in the car until she goes to sleep (my ds routinely napped in his car seat in our driveway or garage for at least a full year until we gave up on the afternoon naps all together).
* Let your dd stay awake playing quietly in her crib or playpen - anywhere you can darken the lights and you step away knowing she's safe - so she's not distracted by your presence and can drop off to sleep if she gets tired, but at the same time she doesn't have to go to sleep if she's truly not sleepy.
* Get her LOTS of exercise before nap time and bed time - have her run around like crazy, take her to a park, whatever. Exhaust her
FWIW, another thing which happened with one of our dds - she really needed a nap but fought it like crazy, and as she fought she'd just continue getting more and more tired and as she got more and more tired her stubborn refusal to not nap just ramped up like crazy. What worked (sort of!) for her was to purposely have some mom-dd quiet time together where we snuggled, read books, talked, played with her stuffies etc - and did NOT mention taking a nap. The mom-closeness would calm her down and distract her from the power struggle and then she fell asleep.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - I wanted to add - when I re-read what I wrote above it sounds like I'm a bit of a scheduled person, and really I'm not at all. I never felt it was necessary to keep to any schedule, and any semblance of what looked like a schedule when our kids were young was driven by our kids - who actually did enjoy a bit of being on a schedule! Does that make sense? What I'm trying to say is I was letting my kids lead... and when they were ready to give up naps, I let them give them up. My gut feeling though, is that at one, your dd is most likely going through a growth spurt of some type but still needs the daytime nap.
