Two year old child genius reads Spanish

In March, 2008, little Elizabeth Barrett astonished 'Today' viewers, just as she has speech pathologists, when she showed off her ability to read at the tender age of 17 months. It was a skill she picked up on her own, and no one knows exactly why. The Barretts are speech pathologists, and when Elizabeth was born, they started teaching her sign language along with spoken language. They read to her often, and her favorite television program -- the only one her parents let her watch -- was a PBS show called “Signing Times,” which teaches kids sign language. Yet as much as her parents worked to stimulate her language skills, they were as astonished as anyone when she started picking out words and reading them – especially as they had never attempted to teach her to read. “This is something we never expected,” Katy Barrett said last March. “We didn’t teach her this. We don’t sit down and drill her on words. She loves reading books.” The Barretts had gone public with Elizabeth’s story in hopes of meeting other people with similarly precocious children.

“We’ve had contact from people all over the country who have similar stories,” Katy Barrett said. Elizabeth is 2 now, and not only reading sentences in English, but also reading and learning Spanish.