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.

Here's a print article....

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=7937573

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

For the video...

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&from=msnhome

My kids were all "late bloomers", LOL! All were reading before K age, but nothing nearly as impressive as that. (Well, they could read better than that....but given that they were 3-5 and all....)

I think I could understand my kids at that age much better though. I will be interesting to see how she develops in time. What a cutie! The cursive thing was really impressive. It's very interesting to say the least.

I thought she was adorable and certainly spoke a lot better than mine did at that age (of course, two of mine didn't talk at all by that age, so any speech is impressive to me).

The cursive thing is funny -- I had a similar moment with DS at age 4. He liked to "help" me shop and read the grocery list to me. After shopping one day, I realized that he'd just read the list in cursive. When I asked him about it, he said one word was hard, but he figured it out. I don't know why is surprised me since it's not that big a stretch, and certainly not much of a stretch to a kid who self-taught reading at 2, but still, most kids do require instruction in these things, don't they?

For a 17 month old to just recognize the basic pattern of the letters and infer a word in cursive seems pretty amazing to me!

J

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.

I think she was sounding out some words there too! I was majorly impressed!!! I only commented on the speech because I'm not sure I would have recognized reading at any age, if that's as clear as it was coming out. I'M no genius, LOL! No wonder DD11 in particular was so frustrated with me (when she first tried speaking). Then again....she still had trouble with the fancy a's in kindergarten!

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!