A BRAINY toddler taught himself the road code at just three years old – and uses that knowledge to give tips to his parents as they drive around.
Ariella Procopiou is fascinated by shapes and when she saw a street sign for the first time she was hooked.
Ariella Procopiou learned the entire road traffic code when she was only three years oldPhoto credit: SWNS
Mama Maria Constantinou, 40, then decided to give her a copy the traffic regulations which has become her favorite book.
Little Ariella now sits in the back of the car when traveling, reciting obscure statutes to help her mother and father Nicholas Procopiou, 41.
She checks them off when they make mistakes and praises them when they do something right.
And the precocious young woman isn’t just a whiz kid for shapes—she’s also learned the basics of a whopping seven languages.
Ariella can string together sentences in French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian and German.
Maria, from Cheshunt, Herts: “When we drive, she looks for all the signs and says, ‘Mom, look – slow down!’ or ‘Mom, there are rough roads.’
“If I miss a speed limit, she tells me, and if I try to park somewhere I can’t, she says, ‘Look mom, you can’t park here!’
“If I leave my turn signals or hazard lights on, she tells me to turn them off – or just reach out and do it yourself!
“She knows all the symbols for all traffic signs and she is more attentive than me, for example she reminds me to slow down in front of a zebra crossing if I’m going too fast.
“I call her my third and fourth eye when it comes to driving – she knows and sees everything.”
Ariella, who was able to recognize letters, colors and shapes in English by just 18 months, uses songs and review programs on YouTube to learn, her mother said.
Her first words were eggplant, persimmon, hexagon and pentagon, and she knows all the names of the planets in our solar system.
Ariella also taught herself to read when she was two, making up the sounds all by herself – and picking up a new book from the local library every day.
Maria said: “When she doesn’t know what something means, she gets so frustrated. She always finds new things to learn.
“She loves languages and can’t go to bed until she’s learned numbers to 100 and phrases like ‘good night’, ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’
“One day she was just fascinated by everything Chinese and she came to find me and started speaking in Chinese, so I was like, ‘Okay, okay, it’s Chinese this week.’
“She was holding my phone with this song that teaches Chinese colors and she had learned them all.
“I held up colored paper and she said the color in Chinese.
“I told her preschool that she loved languages, so they taught her Japanese numbers up to 100 on her first day to help her settle in.”
Ariella was conceived through IVF after Nicholas, a hairdresser, and Maria, a childcare worker, spent three years trying.
The tots’ talents also extend to solving jigsaw puzzles of up to 42 pieces all on their own, and their mother has already taught them multiplication tables.
From the age of two, she can also say her address and her mother’s cell phone number and repeat a television commercial if she has only heard it once.