17-Month-Old Baby Elizabeth Can Read

Elizabeth Barrett has been on this planet about 68-weeks; she is a curly haired little blonde who has not seen her 18-month birthday noted yet. Most children at 17 months of age are busy exploring colorful toys, new tastes, and a constantly changing wardrobe size; not Elizabeth! This creative child is reading real words and sentences to entertain us online today. Click here to see the Elizabeth video.

The key here is that this baby girl has two parents who have been reading to her daily and helping her to develop these skills since the day that she was born. The Barrett family lives in Lubbuck, Texas, and has given an interview to their local WBKO Television that can be read online.

I totally enjoy hearing about parents who have taken time out of their busy days to start preparing their toddlers for school. Children who have skills prior to experiencing classroom competition always seem to excel beyond what we think of as “normal”. Although, a baby reading at 17-months of age doesn’t seem very miraculous to me; one of my girls started reading prior to age two.

My eldest popped-out one cold September evening, with a good sized Mother Goose book in her arms. After brief negotiations, we were able to pry this book out of her hands so that we could get an accurate weight reading for the birth certificate. We just weren’t thinking right, and completely forgot to pack her book to bring home from the hospital with us.

While frustrated with her sobbing cries, that sounded rather like the world was ending at any second if the situation were to be left up to her for decision, I paced away nightly for the first few months with a bright and colorful National Geographic magazine in one hand, reading away about all of the wonderful sights that she could dream about if she would just consent to trying out the art of sleeping.

Eventually, my little-one learned to scoot off of her playtime blanket. With her eyes glued to the low walnut bookcase holding about 8-years of those pretty yellow magazines, my daughter realized that all of that pretty yellow could belong to her if she could just figure out a way of reaching them.

Sometime around her first birthday, I had to go down to the book sale and buy a few more piles of used yellow magazines for my daughter to stare at, drool on, and eventually rip to pieces. She was hooked on her collection of National Geographics. I’d read them to her, and she started trying to read them to herself.

By age 2, the cheery yellow magazines were a thing of our past; my daughter was reading simple books. By age-4 she was reading a few books without pictures designed for older children. By grade 4, she had taught herself to speed-read through paperbacks. I don’t speed-read, and have no clue how this happened. She just did it.

At the speed-reading point of her reading career, we started to run into problems. Yes, it is fun and a curiosity to watch a cute little girl perform magic acts with a book in her hands. People would stare at my daughter as she moved her fingers swiftly across pages and came back with total recall of what the story was about.

In school, disbelieving teachers started questioning her word when a reading assignment was given and she told them that she was done too soon. They’d put her through embarrassing question and answer periods in front of her peers, in their efforts to prove that she just couldn’t do what she really was doing. This took its toll on my daughter.

Eventually, my daughter’s speed-reading was accepted as a normal thing for her to be doing, everybody just assumed that she had a wonderful brain inside capable of other amazing feats in the classroom. Somewhere along the way, her amazing reading ability overshadowed an important fact; this child was a special education child being missed.

After hiring math tutors, and trying every way that I knew how to get my daughter through her high school math, she was tested for possible disabilities, and she flunked that test. The news was crushing to my young teen, the kid who could always sail through any reading related classes without much effort.

The final tally-sheet reads: Reading before her time, and then too fast, left my daughter open to be called a liar by teachers and peers. Reading before her time, and then too fast, had people expecting more than my daughter was able to give. Reading before her time, and then too fast, had my daughter feeling like a freak show as she grew into her teens.

In my opinion alone, little Elizabeth’s parents would do well to consider yanking their daughter right back out of the public spotlight instantly.