Girl Becomes the Youngest Member of Mensa

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:

[tepples]

If a child hits the 3-year-old milestones at age 2, the child's IQ is at least 150.

Re:

[Rosy At Random]

The development curve of young children is so variable that such precision makes no sense. There are a hell of a lot of late bloomers out there that turn out just fine.

Re:

[cyphercell]

That's the news here isn't it. Mensa let an early tester in which is known to be in-precise. I'm guessing that Mensa doesn't expect more than about a 15 point gain from other children. 156-138 = 18, if you expect other kids to catch up a bit, a fifteen point difference between her child and adult IQs would leave a few points difference for good measure.

Re:

[cyphercell]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_IQ_society [wikipedia.org]

sorry mensa's requirement is 132

a neat article.

http://www.audiblox.com/iq_scores.htm [audiblox.com]

Re:

[Swizec]

That's odd, I got a 136 on their test and that was only in the 94 percentile, thus no mensa membership. Maybe data differs for us Europeans ...

Depends on the test...

[denzacar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International#Membership [wikipedia.org]

the minimum accepted score on the Stanford-Binet is 132, while for the Cattell it is 148.

Re:

[Swizec]

Oh well, guess they were using the Cattell one then. Didn't really expect to get in anyway, was just curious :P

Re:

[ifeelswine]

If a child hits the 3-year-old milestones at age 2, the child's IQ is at least 150.

not always. there are actual conditions which cause milestones to be met early. one example that comes into mind is aspergers syndrome. kids with aspergers read exceptionally early, and often the parents are elated that their kid is some kind of genius because they are reading at such a young age. only to find they become socially awkward and are issued a slashdot account at age 12.

I feel sorry for her

[erayd]

Judging by the father's comments, she's all set to have a pretty lousy childhood. By all means allow her to learn stuff that challenges her, but not at the expense of doing all the things children should have the opportunity to do (like playing, socialising with friends etc).

"Our main aim is to make sure she keeps learning at an advanced pace."

Any father who has that as his primary aim shouldn't be a parent in my opinion.

Re:

[Ekhymosis]

I have to agree with you. I don't know if these baby geniuses really can look fondly back on their childhood and say 'yeah, I had a great time.' without the shadow of their parents flogging them with 'you must learn this!' or 'you must do that!'
While their parents may mean well, the old adage of 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' will no doubt ring true in this situation as well. Yes, give your child the best possible, but leave them to enjoy life rather than go blind reading and studying

I don't feel sorry for her

[cyphercell]

On the other hand, if you give her a supervisor of average intelligence and a lot of experience that will at some point reach parity with the intelligent rookie. Another way to put it is "experience often trumps talent". Then there's someone with real talent that comes along. She's smart enough that she passed right through Mensa's requirement IQ. I think what scares you is placing her under too many expectations. A very valid concern for someone who is gifted (or anyone for that matter, average, below or

Future Geek?

[siriuskase]

Her education, if you should call it that, should include a wide variety of subjects. Certainly she should learn to excel at whatever her natural talents are, but her educators should also ensure that learns social skills, and other skills that would keep her out of her mother's basement submitting articles and stories to slashdot. And she should certainly learn makeup and dressing and all those other wonderful skills normal girls get to learn.

Re:

[cyphercell]

That's the rub, though isn't it? If she's twelve and half way through HS, she will be intellectually capable of competing with her peers, but not emotionally. How much make up do you let a twelve year old wear if she's attending High School? You could say the same for athletics and possibly public performance.

Re:

[siriuskase]

Maybe she shouldn't go to High School until she's physically and emotionally ready. It's doable. All she has to do is sit jin the back of her Middle School Life Science or PreAlgebra class and attend Biology and Calculus via laptop and earbuds. In fact, her stupider but physically mature classmates who should have been held back to elementary school could avoid that stigma by telecommuting to third grade versions of the same courses.

I disagree.

[Jane Q. Public]

Having been in almost exactly the same boat, and having studied the issue to no small degree.

To make matters worse, I was young for my grade to start with, due to a quirk of when my birthday fell. Then, school officials decided that they wanted to skip me up a grade. My parents told them "no"... that I should be kept with people of my own age so I could "socialize" with "normal" people.

Both my own experience and studies agree: this is a bad thing to do. Certainly you should not force-teach children, b

Also, I should point out...

[Jane Q. Public]

that given a Standard Deviation of 16 (which if not exact is pretty close), this child is NOT in the upper 0.2% of the population (99.8 percentile). She is in the upper .005% of the population (99.95 percentile).

Doing the actual calclulations...

[Jane Q. Public]

I get an even bigger result. She is in the top .0002 % of the population... or 99.9998 percentile.

Re:

[ockegheim]

Otherwise every 500th kid would get articles written about them. That's a lot of journalism.

Re:

[siriuskase]

this article is about her age, not her IQ. Plenty of people are that smart, it's just that most parents don't gave them evaluated for Mensa at such a young age, and then go stick her face all over the web. That's what's unusual, the parents, not the kid.

Re:

[killertime]

I get that if she's in the upper .005% she has to be in the upper 0.2% too.

Re:

[Zapotek]

I agree with the parent.
Due to my birth-date and some weird Greek law I started school 1 year earlier than my peers...
Although, I never recall having any problems in school.
Other than my rebellious nature and my problem with elementary school teachers acting like rulers of the galaxy just because they have some power over 9 year olds...
Anyway that's not my point.
According to some on-line IQ tests I rank at 100, exactly at the middle of the IQ curve.
Despite that fact, on high school I could do 3-4 deg

Re:

[sjames]

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 chronologica

Re:

[Rosy At Random]

I think my experience shows that it gets rather complicated: due to my... shall we say, somewhat awkward social skills, I know a lot of people thought I was a bit of an idiot when I was young. And many still do. The general response when, at the age of 14, I scored 171 on my IQ test result was of disbelief and cynicism.

Re:

[kylemonger]

I like her parent's attitude. Give her every opprtunity to learn and hopefully keep her away from the jackals^H^H^H^H^H^Hother children who will persecute her in the name of "socialization." I hope she graduates college by the time she turns 18. I wish I had.

Please, not at the expense of her childhood!

[rotide]

As long as her parents don't push her to study instead of being a kid, I'm all for advancing her schooling. When the neighbor's kid knocks on the door asking if she can go out and play, don't deny her that and tell her she has 2 more hours of flash cards to study.

Kids, smart or not, are still kids. I'd hate to see her lose out on her childhood.