Girl Becomes the Youngest Member of Mensa 31
Two-year-old Elise Tan-Roberts has become the youngest member of Mensa. With an estimated IQ of 156, Elise is in the top 0.2 per cent of children her age. At 5 months she could talk, she could recognize her written name before she was 1 and she will be ruling the world at 11. Her father says, "Our main aim is to make sure she keeps learning at an advanced pace. We don't want to make her have to dumb down and stop learning just to fit in. But she's still my baby. I just want her to be happy and enjoy herself."
Re:I disagree. (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree completely. While I don't have an IQ of 156, it's high enough that most of my school career (where I was not allowed to skip ahead) felt exactly like a pointless menial job that I didn't even get paid for. Imagine an adult whose job is to circle the shape that doesn't belong for 6 hours a day and they're not legally entitled to even try to get a better job.
NOT providing opportunity for her to be out of the mainstream is what would set her up for misery. The key is to recognize that her chronological, intellectual, and emotional age may not match up at all and their relation to each other will vary over time. The most sure constant is that her intellectual age will be greater than the chronological.
For those who advocate keeping her with her age group, consider that due to reduced ability to relate to her peers intellectually, she will lag behind emotionally and socially anyway. That lag might be smaller if she is advanced in school so that she has at least somewhat better ability to relate to her peer group.