toddler won't aleep; learning curve?

[FoxTales]

Has anyone had a LO who refuses to sleep and just lays in bed talking? Some days, my 17 month old will lay there for up to hours just practicing sounds or saying the same word, over and over again. I have noticed it seems to coincide with learning curves... He is very linguistically advanced (when I say that, I mean he knows colours, recognizes some letters, links only a few words but has around 150-200 words in his vocabulary etc). Is this normal, staying awake to learn? He had done this since he was about 10 months old... But I get concerned that he isn't getting the sleep he needs. I laid him down at 6:30 and he didn't fall asleep until 8 pm. Just talking. Sometimes it isn't until 9 or 10. He only does it maybe once in a couple of months... Usually he goes down and sleeps as soon as his head hits the pillow, but he hardly naps during the day (barely more than an hour) so he needs the sleep at night! It is why he goes down so early... And clearly he needs it, because he sleeps at least 13 hours at night. Just wondering if it was normal for learning curves to not sleep? Or if there is a way to relax him and have him go to sleep easier? He is a miserable crank when he doesn't sleep enough lol

[artistmom27]

My son is 5, he started talking himself to sleep at 10 months and up until just recently he would do it.

[mrsniebo]

I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation between talking oneself to sleep and learning ability, but my DD's been doing the same thing for quite some time. By the time she was 2, she knew all of her colors, her alphabet, had more words in her vocabulary than I could keep track of, knew 25+ dinosaur names, could count to 8, and knew a few shapes. 

Now that she's 28 months old, she has moved onto to singing to and putting on sock puppet shows for her stuffed animals to help her get to sleep in addition to just talking.

[FoxTales]

I'm not sure - you have a smart little girl, though! I know that we tend to see a language explosion every time he does it, because he only does it once every 6-8 weeks. He will wake up and seem to have learned things overnight. Most nights he just goes right to sleep. I thought perhaps he couldn't sleep because he had too much going on and couldn't shut his brain off, you know? Not sure.

Quoting mrsniebo:

I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation between talking oneself to sleep and learning ability, but my DD's been doing the same thing for quite some time. By the time she was 2, she knew all of her colors, her alphabet, had more words in her vocabulary than I could keep track of, knew 25+ dinosaur names, could count to 8, and knew a few shapes. 

Now that she's 28 months old, she has moved onto to singing to and putting on sock puppet shows for her stuffed animals to help her get to sleep in addition to just talking.

[TempestRayne]

Is it normal? Probably. He is practicing. As long as it isn't all the time, I would not be concerned.

[aleatra.r]

There it's a correlation, basically they get so excited about their new skill they don't want to stop! Even to sleep lol. Which unfortunately for the parents this can lead to them being over stimulated and over tired, which we all know can lead to a very cranky baby.

[VictoriousTory]

My 17 month old talks himself to sleep for naptime almost everyday... sometimes it takes him up to an hour to go to sleep.... he's not mad... but doing what you said... talking to himself... repeating words... talking to the dogs... his stuffed animals... eventually he will go to sleep.... but he usually takes a good nap. We don't have that problem with bed time though.