Special Report: Babies with books

"And here we go! Trick or treat! Very good!"

Bernard Boit / Autumn's dad
"I was a skeptic at first because i never heard of children reading at 9 ten months."

"What’s that say? Pumpkin!! Very good!"

While the Boits are extremely proud of autumn, they credit her amazing ability to read to dr. Robert titzer… the California educator is the developer of a set of videos and dvds called "your baby can read!". It's a concept that combines the written word with sounds and visual examples. Linda started the program with autumn at three and a half months. She could identify words at 15 months... And took off from there.

Linda Boit / Autumn's mom
"She would read things like 'Hechts' off a shopping bag, or taco bell. Just reading the word

'Starbucks', 'booksellers', 'Barnes and Noble'."

Bernard Boit / Autumn's mom
"Anything. To include handwriting, street signs, billboards."

"What’d you say? Halloween? Very good!"

Dr. Robert Titzer / educator
"If they're allowed to see the language, they can learn the patterns of the written language very naturally. Especially if they learn earlier in life when their brains are developing very rapidly."

Dr. Titzer says most children don't learn to read until 5 or 6, but he says the ability is there as early as nine months. As for critics...

Dr. Robert titzer / educator
"We’ve been doing it the wrong way for such a long time that people look at this and say why would you do this? But anyone else who's used the system says why in the world would you wait?"

"Hi!" ...Hi!"

Autumn is clearly a happy child and the Boits say they've never pressured her to learn.

Linda Boit / Autumn's mom
"It’s opened up a world for her in that she can entertain herself. She can read books in the car now."

As that baby's learning has progressed, she is even starting to understand the words that her parents are spelling out... all at under two years old.

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