At the age of 3, he became the youngest member of Mensa in Britain.
When Teddy Hobbs was 3 years and 9 months old he was accepted into Mensa after acing an IQ test with the group – scoring 139 out of 160 on the Stanford-Binet test, surprising his parents, who had no idea how smart he was.
The child prodigy from Portishend, Somerset, now four, reads Harry Potter books when his parents let him, and appears to relax looking for words, the Daily Mail reports.
Beth Hobbs, 31, and her husband Will, 41, say they never expected their son to become a Mensa member at such a young age.
"We wanted some sort of assessment so we would know what level the school would start at," said Beth. "Teddy was our first child and as he was conceived through IVF, we have nothing to compare him to."
"We were told three years was the youngest age of anyone they had accepted into MENSA in the UK, although there was someone in the US as young as two," his mother said.
“We did an IQ test where we basically told him he was going to sit and do 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 selected by the MENSA children's adviser – so we thought he might join. We knew he could do things his peers couldn't, but I don't think we realized how good he was," he adds.
Beth argues that Teddy's genius is both a blessing and a curse, as he shows little interest in some of the more "normal" things a young boy might enjoy, such as toys and television.
"It has its challenges too, my friends can say 'Oh we need to eat some f----- and their kids won't understand what they're saying, but Teddy will spell it straight away and want some,'" states.
As she describes it, when they had their daughter, they bought Teddy a tablet to pass the time so they could focus on her. However, he was not interested in playing games.
“Instead, he likes to use apps to try to learn to count to 100 in Mandarin and other languages. At present, Teddy is unaware of his abilities compared to other children his age. The couple stress that they try to keep him grounded given his genius.
Mensa is an international organization focused on recognizing, developing and supporting human intelligence. The only criteria for membership is to have an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) that ranks them in the top 2% of the human population. That is, greater than or equal to 148 on the Cattell scale (equivalent to 132 on the Stanford-Binet scale and 131 on the Wechsler scale).
It was founded on 1 October 1946 in Oxford, England, by barrister Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware, also a barrister and scientist. Today there are national Mensa organizations in 50 countries around the world, including Greece, and members in more than 100 countries around the world. The number of active members exceeds 140.000.
Source: .huffingtonpost.gr