Mar 10 2008
Read Baby! Elizabeth Barrett on The Today Show
This morning on the Today Show they told the story of little Elizabeth Barrett a 17 month old from Lubbock Texas who can read. (Yes, Lubbock PBS airs Signing Time!!) This story has been blogged, linked and aired around the country in the last month. Her parents are both speech pathologists and credit her “favorite television program SIGNING TIME!” as part of the language rich environment that helped her with this amazing skill. Read the story (and rate it high), watch the video links
Today Show Video 1
Today Show Video 2
and email the Today Show about your incredible experiences with Signing Time.
In each interview the Barrett’s have mentioned Signing Time! The Today Show even aired a clip of Signing Time this morning. My mom called and said, “I just saw you on the Today Show!” 
It’s just great to have so many speech pathologists on-board with signing nowadays! We got in touch with the Barrett’s and Katy said that she feels a great outcome of all of this media attention would be letting more people know about Signing Time. We are sending them the entire Signing Time library to use at home with Elizabeth and in their speech therapy practices. Just our little way of saying “Thank you!”
We really do have the BEST fans!
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4 Responses to “Read Baby! Elizabeth Barrett on The Today Show”
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Rachel this is so wonderful. I started to tear up when I saw Signing Time come up in the video, because ST! has meant so much to our family, especially baby Jane. Although at 22 months she’s not quite reading (lol) she knows the entire alphabet by sight, every color by sight, can count to 22 and sign the whole time. That’s not because we teach her all day, it’s because of Signing Time!
I was so delighted to see this! You know what Signing Time means to our family~ when I first saw William spelling the word ‘Red’ with the refrigerator magnets, saying “R… E… D… RED!” while he signed each letter and then the sign for Red, I was blown away! He was only 4½ years old at the time, which was a wonderful accomplishment, but that he has Down syndrome and verbal apraxia too, just emphasized for us that signing with him was the right thing to do from the time he was an infant. And Signing Time has been the biggest part of that, because he really learns and retains what he’s been learning from Signing Time. Not just the signs, but the concepts too. His first grade homework consists of reading 100 minutes or more a week, and thanks to the ability of Signing Time to add literacy benefits, he has no problem reaching that goal each week.
And when he can’t quite say something clearly, we ask him to sign or spell it for us, which is happy to oblige. Thanks for all you’ve done for him, and us!
I read the story of Elizabeth with great interest, because my son who is 2 1/2 can read many words and even simple sentences (I write them on a chalkboard with no visual cues whatsoever. He doesn’t know what I’m going to write). When I heard that Elizabeth had watched Signing Time, I thought “well, isn’t that an interesting coincidence!” Our entire family has watched Signing Time since our son was about 9 months old. We all learned ASL together as we watched the videos and by the time Theo could talk, he was able to sign over 130 signs (yes, I counted!) and could understand but not sign many more. As he learned to talk, his signing dropped off, though even now as an extremely verbal toddler, he will sign certain words to emphasize a point when he’s excited. I always suspected that Signing Time had something to do with how verbal he was, and now I realize, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that he is already learning to read. Let me tell you, I will be a fan for life!
Wow! My youngest son started reading when he was 2.5 years old and we thought that was pretty extraordinary but wow, 17 months! My son has hyperlexia which has contributed to his early reading and writing skills but I also firmly believe that the signing time series has also been EXTREMELY beneficial to him as well.