Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Elizabeth Barrett: 17month old can read

I was amazed to see this little girl on the Today Show! The video is on MSN.com

Cathy

I am pretty lazy, Cathy, do you have a link? I am curious as to how much this little girl is reading. One of my kids recognized words from 12 months and had a ton of sight words by 16 months. As far as I can tell though, he wasn't decoding new words until he turned two. I'm a little fuzzy on the data for my other kids, but they were reading well before age three.

For what it's worth, we officially knew that our son was reading on his own at 2. But in all likelihood, he was reading much earlier. We just assumed that he had memorized all of his board books, until he picked up an unfamiliar book and read the whole thing aloud (that was at 2). So when he actually learned to read could have been many months before that. He knew all his letters and numbers by about 15 months, I think, and was also remembering what basic street signs said at that point. We were living in a concrete jungle type environment at the time, and words were everywhere.

Tara

This is great proof of what some baby/toddlers can do!

The child learning expert stated that Elisabeth has extraordinary visual perception and visual memory-SIGHT READING! This is what I have tried to describe in other posts.

My kids weren�t that skilled at 17 months. I also minimized their skill because I believed that true reading meant sounding out words, but that is what I refer to as sight reading and they each started it around 18 months. My kids still read pretty exclusively by sight, as do I.

I don�t think her parents seem at all exploitive about their daughter�s abilities and I�m so glad they are educating the public in such a humble manner.

Tara-

I have had the same experience with my own kids and not being sure when they were reading and at what level. I think I was in denial with DS, as he was my first baby and I kept thinking that he was remembering words from signs and books. He used to insist that I read piles of books to him, and he particularly liked the DK books that use real photos and have a word printed to correspond to each picture. So we would sit and read books of solitary words: cloud, rain, weather, flowers, garden, sun, hat,... I preferred stories, but that wasn't his thing.

Similar to Elizabeth from the clip, he used to go through the supermarket reading words. Shortly after his 2nd birthday, he spontaneously read, "We save you more" and then pointed to my customer discount card and said, "This says edge". At that point, I finally understood that he was really reading. I took him home and told my husband about it that night. He didn't believe me. he worte, "MOM IS NUTS" on a piece of paper and asked DS to read it. He giggled, and read it clear as day. By the time he was 2.5, he was reading some adult non fiction and looking up rocks and seashells in field guides.

It is interesting that the couple in the video talked about Signing Time. My youngest LOVES ST. She got her first ST dvd for her 1st birthday. By the time she was two, she knew the entire ASL alphabet and at least 100 other signs. I wonder if my kids would have read even earlier had I allowed them to watch tv before age 1. I recall someone here talking about Dr. Ruf and her thoughts on early tv exposure facilitating early reading.

Elizabeth is cute as a button and I am glad that they didn't make her out to be a freak. Very fun to see her do her thing!

I love hearing these memories.

I remember one more thing about that time in DS's life. Like your DS, mine would want me to read to him for HOURS. Sometimes, I wouldn't be able to, because I'd have to do something else (cook dinner, use the bathroom, clean the house, etc.) and he would bring his books and follow me wherever I went and try to figure them out himself.

I remember that when we'd bring in new library books every week, he would look through them, stop in the middle, go and grab one of his own books, and open it to a certain page, and then go back to the new book. What I didn't realize right away was that he was probably using his own books as "dictionaries" to help decode the library books whenever he came to a word he was unsure about.

At the time, I had no idea this was scary-smart behavior for a child under 2 because I didn't have much exposure to other same-aged kids. Now, I have a friend with a 3yo dd and I think to myself, "when my DS was her age, he was already bored with Magic Tree House books." It's just so odd...

Tara

My son definitely could not read that well at 17 months but I think he was reading some words. At 12 to 13 months he was interested in the names of all the spices in our spice rack so I would pick him up and tell him the names as he pointed to them. He would then repeat the names--a little hard to understand what he was saying but I could make it out. He especially liked "Tarragon" and probably because he has a sister named Tara, but he sometimes laughed when I would ask my husband "is Tara gone?" He got to the point where he could point and say the names of some of them, but I knew he could have memorized the position of the spices in the rack as well as their names, so I knew that didn't count as reading, but he seemed interested in letters and words. He liked alphabet books and word books at that age. I think it was before he turned two that we got a McDonald's toy with Bugs Bunny dressed as a fortune teller. You could ask a question, pull a lever and words like Not Sure, Ask Again or Hopefully So would appear. He played with that enough that he could "read" the answers and that was definitely sight reading, but when I tried to get him to show his dad, he wouldn't do it and my husband kind of teased me about thinking a baby could read. He didn't tell me his older highly gifted son had read extremely early without being taught. He let me think I was crazy for a while.

At 2 1/2 when we discovered that we could spell out words and he could identify them and that he even liked to spell some words, we knew that he was really able to read. But even then, he wouldn't do it every time you asked him to. If he didn't feel like doing something, he just wouldn't do it. If we got the video camera, he would just laugh and clown around, so we quit trying.

I love this board - I'm so glad to find a place that really, truly, sometimes freakishly, relates. My DS4 got an Arby's "oven mitt" that did the same fortune telling when he was about 2 1/2, and he read those words too. We had to bring Oven Mitt everywhere for a few weeks! He started reading the road construction signs at 2 - 2 1/2, then quickly learned tons of words from then on.

It's hard for me to remember ages, and that was only 2 years ago. But I do remember that DS's first word after Mama and Dada was "book," and he wanted to be read to for hours (still does). Also, about sign language, I remember I started teaching him signing just before he was 1, but since I'm lazy, I quit teaching signs because he could already talk.

And your husband is very naughty to make you think you were crazy!

That is impressive! (just watched the video clip). Isn't it funny (strange) that my heart goes out to her parents a little (feeling sorry for them), knowing how hard it is to have such a bright kiddo.

Wow- isn't it weird how these precocious kids can have really odd things in common? The fortune teller devices, for example, and I've heard several stories of PG kids doing things that one of mine did, like biting cheese into shapes or discovering the shape of Nevada in a tortilla chip!