4-Year-Old Becomes UK’s Youngest Mensa Member

4-year-old Teddy Hobbs from Somerset, England, has become the youngest British member of Mensa, a society of people with high IQs. He taught himself to read as a toddler and can count to 100 in seven different languages.

A High IQ Society

Mensa International is the largest and oldest community for highly intelligent people and membership is based on IQ test results. The organization currently has over 130,000 members across 100 countries.

Mensa is the Latin word for ‘table’ and describes the round-table nature of the organization. The organisation’s logo was created to resemble a table.

Mensa International (the umbrella organization) is headquartered in Caythorpe, England. It was established as a non-political group in its aims and sought to recruit members regardless of race or gender.

The organization comprises national groups. The headquarter for British Mensa is located in Wolverhampton, England. Another branch of Mensa, called the American Mensa, was established as well; and it is the second major branch.

In order to gain membership at this prestigious High IQ Society, you must score the 98^th percentile or more on certain standardized IQ or other approved intelligence tests, such as the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales.

The acceptable score to join would be 132 on the Stanford–Binet, while for the Cattell it is 148 and 130 for the Wechsler tests.

The American Mensa has its own special standardized test that must be cleared in order to join. It is proctored by American Mensa and is not comparable to any other IQ tests.

UK’s Prodigy: Teddy Hobbs

Teddy Hobbs is a 4-year-old boy from Portishead in Somerset, England, who joined the High IQ Society, Mensa.

Teddy’s mother, Beth Hobbs, stated that she first took note of his appetite for learning during the COVID-19 lockdown when he began to watch educational television programmes. There were a variety of children’s programmes that he could watch, but he was adamant about watching only the educational ones.

At the age of 2, Teddy could count to 100 in English and his mother thought it was simply his “quirk”. Today, he can count to 100 in several non-native languages, including Mandarin, Welsh, French, Spanish and German.

“He could count to 100 before he was two, in English. And I just assumed every child has their own quirk. Each child develops slightly quicker in something else than the other ones. And we just assumed that was his thing and that was fine and that that would be the end of it,” his mother said.

Teddy also taught himself how to read at the age of two. He picked up the habit of reading by watching television programmes and videos on his tablet without his parents even noticing. At the tender age of four, he is able to read full-length novels.

Teddy scored 139 points out of 150 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test and was admitted to Mensa late last year. He was in the 99.5^th percentile for his age. The incredibly intelligent boy was only three years and eight months of age when he had taken the test and had the letter and word recognition of a child of eight years and ten months of age.

He received his certificate of membership in Mensa, making him one of the youngest members to join the society.

The Youngest Member of The Society

The youngest member to join Mensa International was Kashe Quest, a toddler from Los Angeles, California in the United States. She scored a total of 146 out of 150 on the American Mensa test and was 2 years old when she joined the society. She is currently 4 years old.

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