A four-year-old little boy named Teddy Hobbs has made viral news after making it into Mensa – the oldest high-IQ society –as their youngest member. During the lockdown, Teddy, only two years old at the time, taught himself how to read and count in Mandarin.
Based in Somerset in Britain, Teddy’s parents were at first unsuspecting of Teddy’s gift for learning. At two, he would sit and make noises as he played on his tablet. His mom, Beth, gathered that he was just ‘making sounds’ whilst playing a game on the device, until Teddy clarified to his mom that he was actually sounding out numerals, in Mandarin!
Shocked by the rate at which their son could learn new things, Teddy’s parents decided that it would be best to have a health visitor assess his IQ score before he started school.
At 3 years and 7 months old, Teddy’s letter and word recognition proved to be on par with that of an 8-year-old, placing Teddy’s IQ score in the 99.5 percentile for his age.
In chatting to BBC on the radio, Teddy’s mom Beth says:
“He chooses a new topic of something to be interested in every couple of months or so, it seems. Sometimes it’s numbers. It was times tables for a while – that was a very intense period – then countries and maps and learning to count in different languages…”
Teddy’s mom goes on to say that he isn’t aware of his genius status just yet, and they hope to keep it that way for as long as possible to keep him grounded. Being the clever boy that he is, though, Teddy has already latched on to the fact that something’s different, wondering why his classmates can’t read as he does.
“He’s starting to figure out now that his friends can’t read and he’s a bit like ‘why?’” says Beth.
Mensa, the high-IQ scoring society, only admits members who are in the top 2% of the population when it comes to IQ. While the society does not generally assess or place children, Teddy Hobbs has made it into the society as their youngest member at only four years old!
Now, at four, Teddy can read and count in seven different languages, but is still a “normal little boy” who finds poo jokes incredibly funny, says his mom.
Teddy has a younger sister, and the Hobbs wonders if she will also start to present unique gifts as Teddy did at her age, only a matter of time will tell! If Teddy is anything to go by, she’ll be counting in French soon.
ALSO SEE:
Viral bride shares her wedding with her sister’s engagement in the kindest way
Feature Image: Beth Hobbs
