You're not doing anything wrong!
My son was a catnapper but didn't go to sleep easily. He didn't give a lot of sleepy cues so what I did was look up average wake times for his age and started prioritizing sleep based on that. Until he was six months old he would only nap for 15-30 minutes at a time 98% of the time. If he did take a longer nap, it was usually on us, but most of the time even being worn or held it was a catnap. So say he should be up for an hour & 15 minutes, then I would start nursing him to sleep at 1 hr & 5 minutes or something. Do what works to get them to sleep! Sleep is important and helps them grow =)
It was exhausting to do that all day and some days were better or worse than others, but now he usually has 2 long naps and maybe a catnap each day, and it's so much better. The best thing I did for myself was to accept the way he sleeps and just go with the flow. It didn't change the way he slept but it changed my stress levels, and because I was able to prioritize his sleep with less stress on my part we were happier all around. He was happy from getting some sleep, and I was happy not stressing!
How much sleep is your little guy getting at night? My son was a champion night sleeper from early on (and it's changed
) so another way I helped him be well rested was to make sure his night sleep period (including any night wakings) was minimum 10 hrs, usually closer to 11 or 12. Then the other 3-4 during the day we'd try to get through catnaps.