Sat. Nov 9th, 2024
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BRITAIN’S smartest toddler taught HIMSELF to read at the age of two and has an IQ of 139.

Teddy Hobbs, now aged four, became the country’s youngest Mensa member as a toddler with abilities like being able to count to 100 in six other languages.

Teddy Hobbs with his MENSA certificate2

Teddy Hobbs with his MENSA certificateCredit: SWNS
The toddler taught himself to read aged two years old2

The toddler taught himself to read aged two years oldCredit: SWNS

The exclusive organisation for the intellectual ‘elite’ welcomed the youngster when he was just three years and nine months old.

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

He scored 139 out of 160 on the Stanford Binet test and shocking his parents, who had no idea quite how smart he was.

The child genius was born through IVF to proud parents Beth and Will Hobbs, from Portishead, Somerset, who only got their son assessed ahead of him starting school.

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Beth, 31, said: “We did an IQ test, where we basically told him he was going to sit and do some puzzles with a lady for an hour, and he thought it was the most wonderful thing.

“After he completed it we were told he was eligible by Mensa’s child advisor, so we thought he may as well join.

“We were a bit like ‘pardon?’. We knew he could do things his peers couldn’t, but I don’t think we realised quite how good he was.”

Teddy is now capable of even reading Harry Potter books, when his parents allow him.

He even likes to relax – with a word search.

Beth says that Teddy’s genius comes as a blessing and a curse though, with him showing little interest in some of the more ‘normal’ things a young boy may enjoy like games and TV.

She said: “It comes with it’s challenges, my friends can say ‘oh should we have some c-a-k-e’ and their kids will not know what they’re saying, but Teddy will immediately spell it out and want some.

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

“His idea of fun is that he likes to sit down and recite his times tables, and he even got so excited over fractions one time that he gave himself a nosebleed.

“That seems to be his quirk, and we’ll roll with it, but we’re trying very much to not make a thing of it.”

The pair say that they are trying to keep him “humble” given his genius 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’re slowly getting to the point in nursery now where they’re starting to do a more formal curriculum.

“His friends can sort of read a couple of letters of the alphabet – meanwhile he can read Harry Potter.

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

Beth says Teddy’s level of interest in conversation likely exceeds what her friends are talking about with their four year olds.

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She said: “His social and development skills really are us are the main priority; we spent a lot of time trying to have these children – so they need to be good citizens.

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

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