Four-year-old becomes UK’s youngest Mensa member
This 4-year-old British boy puts us all to shame.
High-achieving Teddy Hobbs has become the UK’s youngest member of Mensa — after he taught himself to read as a toddler and can count to 100 in seven languages.
The brainy boy’s mom, Beth Hobbs, of Portishead, North Somerset, said he learned to read when he was just 26 months old “by watching children’s television and copying the sounds of letters,” the BBC reported.
“He started tracing the letters and so when we sent him back to nursery after COVID lockdown we told them we thought he’d taught himself how to read,” she told the outlet.
“We had a phone call back from the nursery, who’d sent a pre-school teacher to check, who said, ‘Yes, he can read!’” Hobbs, 31, said.
“He was playing on his tablet, making these sounds that I just didn’t recognize, and I asked him what it was, and he said, ‘Mummy, I’m counting in Mandarin,’” she added.
Hobbs said Teddy — who was conceived via IVF — was her and her 41-year-old husband Will’s first child, so they wanted experts to evaluate him before he starts school in September.
The boy can already count to 100 in six non-native languages, including French, German, Spanish, Welsh and Mandarin, after he taught himself how to read.
He is even ready to dive into Harry Potter books — when his parents allow.
The couple approached Mensa, the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world, which is open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a special test.
Mensa does not assess children under the age of 10, but if parents want their kids tested they have to go through an educational psychologist,” the Times of London reported.
Teddy was 3 years and seven months old when he took the test, according to the news outlet.
“I was worried about him being able to sit in front of a laptop for an hour, but he absolutely loved it,” Hobbs said.
The Stanford-Binet IQ test revealed that Teddy – who had the letter and word recognition of a child of about 9 years old — scored 139 and was in the 99.5th percentile for his age.
“We’re not sure how he ended up this way, my husband and I are not linguists — so we always joke that the embryologist must have slipped a needle or something to make him this way,” Hobbs said.
“Everyone we have spoken to have been fabulous because it’s been really hard to find any support, but we have no idea why he is so clever,” she continue.
“He doesn’t currently qualify for autism or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnoses — and because he’s just so far ahead it’s hard to get help for him with his learning at that age,” Hobbs added.
The mom joked that having a kid who is so advanced is both a blessing and a curse.
“My friends can say, ‘Oh, should we have some c-a-k-e’ and their kids will not know what they’re saying, but Teddy will immediately spell it out and want some,” Hobbs said.
Teddy, who is considering a career in medicine, enjoys reading to his 15-month-old sister, Pippa, reciting his multiplication tables and taking part in sports.
“He goes through phases and recently started learning all the different flags of the countries around the world. But more recently he’s gotten into play dough, which is great,” Hobbs said, The Times of London reported.
“All we want for Teddy is to be a good person and be happy with life. That’s all any parent would wish for,” she added.
