Why have you changed your routine? You said you stayed upstairs until he fell asleep. Did this take too long or did you decide it was just time to quit doing it. It sounds to me that he is just not ready. Try again in a few months, he will not want his mom upstairs all his life. He just turned 6 lots of kids that age are afraid of things that make no sense to us. When my son was about 8 months old all my friends said I should not be nursing him to sleep at night. He needed to learn to go to sleep on his own they said. After three nights of being up til 2am with a child that would be asleep