Toddler from Somerset becomes Britain’s youngest Mensa member

A toddler has become Britain’s youngest Mensa member at just three years old – fluently reading and counting in seven languages.

Teddy Hobbs managed to enter the exclusive organization for the intellectual ‘elite’ at just three years and nine months.

The child prodigy from Portishead, Somerset, can already count to 100 in six non-native languages, including Mandarin, Welsh, French, Spanish and German.

Teddy, who is now four years old, taught himself to read when he was just two years and four months old, and is now even able to read Harry Potter books, when his parents let him.

He even likes to relax, with a word search.

Little Teddy joined Mensa late last year after passing an IQ test with the group — scoring 139 out of 160 on the Stanford Binet test and surprising his parents, who had no idea how smart he was.

Beth Hobbs, 31, and her husband Will, 41, say they never expected their son, born Theodore, to join the group, and never even planned to apply for membership.

Beth said: ‘We were told three was the youngest age of anyone who had been accepted into MENSA in the UK, although there was someone in the US who was two.

“To be honest, it really was a fluke that he got in. We never wanted him to get in, and even when we evaluated him, it was so we could help him out when school starts in September — we never planned on getting him.” he in a MENSA.

“We did an IQ test, where we basically told him he was going to sit down and solve some puzzles with a lady for an hour, and he thought that was the most wonderful thing.

‘After she completed it, the MENSA child advisor told us she was eligible, so we thought she might as well join.

‘We were a bit like ‘excuse me?’ We knew he could do things that his teammates couldn’t, but I don’t think we realized how good he was.

“We took him to daycare afterwards and he had to come home afterwards because he was so sad that he had to stop doing puzzles. She’ll even do word searches to calm down.

“He wasn’t even that interested in what MENSA is, but he’s about to start to understand that he’s more capable than other kids, so when he starts school I think he’ll realize more.”

“We’re not sure how it ended up this way, my husband and I aren’t linguists, so we always joke that the embryologist must have slipped in a needle or something to make it like that.”

“Everyone we’ve talked to has been fabulous because it’s been so hard to find support, but we have no idea why he’s so smart.

“He currently doesn’t qualify for autism or ADHD diagnoses, and because he’s so far along, it’s hard to get help for him with his learning at that age.”

Teddy and his younger sister were IVF babies, or in vitro fertilization.

Beth says that Teddy’s genius is both a blessing and a curse, as he shows little interest in some of the more “normal” things a child might enjoy, like games and TV.

She said: ‘It comes with its challenges, my friends can say ‘oh we should have some cake’ and their children won’t know what they’re saying but Teddy will immediately explain and want some.

‘You can’t get past him, he listens to everything. He will remember the conversations you had with him at Christmas last year.

“When we had our daughter, we bought her a tablet so we could focus on her, but she was never very interested in playing games or anything.

“Instead, he likes to use apps to try to learn how to count to 100 in Mandarin and other languages.

“His idea of ​​fun is that he likes to sit down and recite his multiplication tables, and once even got so excited about fractions that he made his nose bleed.

“That seems to be his quirk, and we’ll move on, but we’re trying not to do any of that.”

The couple say they are trying to keep him ‘humble’ given his temper to prevent him from developing any kind of ‘superiority complex’.

However, for now he is apparently unaware of his abilities compared to other children his age.

Beth added: “We are slowly getting to the point in the nursery now where they are starting to do a more formal curriculum.

His friends can read a couple of letters of the alphabet, while he can read Harry Potter.

“I remember taking him to kindergarten one day and saying I thought he had taught himself to read, and they didn’t believe me at first.

“Then a preschool teacher went and talked to him that day, and they just called me back and said ‘no, you’re right, Beth.'”

“Obviously, we don’t let him read Harry Potter; we choose more emotionally appropriate books, but he’s essentially at the stage where he can read anything we put in front of him.

“He also has a level of understanding that sometimes makes things difficult. So, for example, on Remembrance Sunday he asked what war is and what poppies are for.

“It’s hard to explain to him when he’s so young, especially when he knows things like there’s a war in Ukraine, so he asks if that’s why we see Ukrainian flags.”

“He just has that level of interest in the conversation above what I hope my friends are talking to their four-year-olds.”

However, he is beginning to realize it. She’ll look at some friends who are struggling to read and say a bit ‘how come they can’t do that?’ when he can; we’re just trying to make sure he doesn’t develop a superiority complex around it.

‘Their developmental and social skills really are our top priority; we spend a lot of time trying to have these children, so they must be good citizens.

“He has some ideas that he wants to be a doctor one day because he and his friend like to play doctor at daycare, but if you ask him what he wants to be, he’ll just say that he wants to focus on being a Teddy.”

Mensa is an international group for high IQ people founded in 1947 that only accepts members who are above the 98th percentile of IQs worldwide.