Toddler with impressive IQ score of 146 becomes youngest American Mensa member
A two-year-old girl has become the youngest member of American Mensa after scoring a 146 on the IQ test.
Mensa, the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world, consists of members who have scored in the top two per cent of the population on a standardised IQ test. In comparison, the average IQ in the US is 98.
On Tuesday, it was reported by KTTV that Kashe Quest, a toddler from Los Angeles, California, had become the group’s newest member.
According to the two-year-old’s mother, Sukhjit Athwal, Kashe’s impressive memory was the first indicator that something was different, with Athwal telling the outlet: “We started to notice her memory was really great. She just picked up things really fast and she was really interested in learning.”
And by the time Kashe was 17 or 18 months old, her mother said she had “recognised all the alphabet, numbers, colours, and shapes”.
Now, at just two years old, the genius toddler is able to identify all 50 states by shape and location on a map, knows 50 signs in sign language, can count to 100 and can identify elements on the periodic table by their symbols, according to KTTV.
But despite Kashe being on her way to learning Spanish, while also learning how to read, her mother said her daughter is still “a normal two-year-old” who has tantrums, which the family simply has to deal with differently because Kashe is “able to understand just a little more”.
“At the end of the day, she’s in that toddler stage. So she very much is still a normal two-year-old where we have negotiations, we have tantrums, we have everything and it’s different because the way we communicate with her, it has to be different because she’s able to understand just a little bit more,” Athwal said.
As for the toddler’s future, Athwal told the outlet that, as a parent, her biggest priority right now is making sure Kashe “has a childhood and we don’t force anything on her”.
“We’re kind of going at her pace and we want to just make sure that she is youthful for as long as she can be,” she added.
Regarding the society’s newest member, Trevor Mitchell, executive director of American Mensa, told People that Kashe is a “remarkable addition”.
“We are proud to have her and to be able to help her and her parents with the unique challenges that gifted youth encounter,” he added.
American Mensa has more than 50,000 members, with the organisation noting that an estimated 6m Americans are eligible for Mensa membership.
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