Teddy, the smartest boy in England, who learned to read and count at the age of 2

At the age of two, he learned – by himself – a reading and counting while watching television and playing on the tablet, without his parents noticing. Teddy Hobbs, who is 4 years old and hails from Portishead, Somerset, England, has become the Mensa’s youngest member (an international non-profit organization which people who have reached or exceeded the IQ of 98% of the world’s population can join) of the United Kingdom.

Teddy “picks up a new topic, something he’s interested in, every two months or so, it seems,” his mother Beth explains to the Today program of BBC Radio 4. “Sometimes it’s the numbers. For a while it was multiplication tables – it was a very intense period – then countries and maps, then learning to count in different languages». Beth, in fact, before realizing that her son was counting in Chinese, she thought that she was just making meaningless sounds. “I asked him what he was doing, and he was like, ‘Oh mom, I’m counting in Mandarin.'” Now can count to 100 in six languagesin addition to his.

For now, Teddy doesn’t realize his extraordinary abilities. “He doesn’t know, and that’s a good thing,” Mom says. “We will continue like this for as long as possible. He’s starting to understand now that his friends can’t read. But it’s very important for us to keep it grounded. If he can do these complex things, great. But he sees it like this: “Ok, I can read, but my friend can run faster than me”. We all have our own individual talents.” And we’ll try to keep it that way for as long as possible.”

Mensa does not normally evaluate the IQ of children, but offers its support to parents, who have their child subjected to intelligence tests through an educational psychologist. Teddy supported him at the age of three years and seven months.

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