How Young Is too Young to Start Studying?

Like most 3-year-olds, Adrian loves to swing, eat ice cream, ride his toy car and watch videos, but there's something Adrian does that most other 3-year-olds don't — he can reel off the names of the 50 U.S. state capitals and he also knows the capitals of more than 100 countries.

The television show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" challenges adults to match wits with grade schoolers. Well, forget fifth-graders. Are you smarter than a 3-year-old? Many adults probably wouldn't be able to answer the questions that Adrian's father, Manny Aivaliotis, throws at his son.

Aivaliotis: "Hey Adrian, what's the capital of Argentina?"
Adrian: "Buenos Aires."
Aivaliotis: "What about the Bahamas?"
Adrian: "Nassau."
Aivaliotis: "Canada?"
Adrian: "Ottawa."

Lilly Gaskin, who just turned 2 last month, is not old enough to really talk yet, but she knows where more than 78 countries are located on a map. Ask her where Malaysia or Ghana is and she'll point it out with her finger. She started doing this at 16 months.

James Gaskin, Lilly's father, says his daughter blows people away with this skill. "They think it'll stop after about three countries," he said, "and then it goes and goes. And 10 minutes later, she's still going and they're tired. Yeah, it blows 'em away. It blows us away."

Keeping Up With the Kids

Lilly certainly blew away Rachael Ray's studio audience when she recently made her national television debut. So do Lilly's parents use the G word to describe their daughter?

"Our little genius?" said Gaskin. "Yeah. She's just really smart."

Gaskin and his wife, Nikki, worry about their responsibility as parents to offer Lilly the best education possible. "I think it's going to be very difficult to keep up with her," said Gaskin.

This was also a point reiterated by Adrian's mother, Carrie Aivaliotis. "I kind of feel a pressure to see what we need to do for him to make sure he's not bored or getting into trouble. People warned us if he knows everything already for the first few grades, he's gonna be a discipline problem because he's not gonna be learning anything," she said."