A real live baby genius!
A Los Angeles toddler is making history as the youngest member accepted into the American Mensa with an IQ of 146, Fox 11 Los Angeles reports.
2-year-old Kashe Quest is making history, being accepted as the youngest member of the American Mensa, one of the largest and oldest societies for people with a high IQ. Kashe currently has an IQ of 146, ranking right up there with Bill Gates and Elon Musk. To put it in perspective, the average IQ in the country is 100.
Her mother, Sukhjit Athwal, said she noticed her daughter was gifted intellectually very early.
“We started to notice her memory was really great. She just picked up things really fast, and she was really interested in learning. At about 17, 18 months, she had recognized all the alphabet, numbers, colors, and shapes,” Athwal said.
Now, at almost 3-years-old, Kashe can identify all 50 states by shape and location on a map. She is currently learning Spanish and already knows more than 50 signs in sign language, can count to 100, is learning to read, and can identify elements on the periodic table by their symbols. Athwal said that despite her daughter’s intellect, she’s still just a toddler, and it’s important to her as a mom to nurture that side as well.
“At the end of the day, she’s in that toddler stage. So she very much is still a normal two-year-old where we have negotiations, we have tantrums, we have everything, and it’s different because the way we communicate with her, it has to be different because she’s able to understand just a little bit more,” Athwal said.
The American Mensa currently has over 50,000 U.S. members, Kashe being the youngest. The organization helps to build community among those with high intelligence while also encouraging research into the characteristics of brilliant people. To be accepted into the Mensa, applicants must have scored within the “top 2 percent of the general population on an accepted standardized intelligence test.”
“I think one of the biggest things with me and [Kashe is] making sure she has a childhood, and we don’t force anything on her too. We’re kind of going at her pace, and we want to just make sure that she is youthful for as long as she can be,” Athwal said.
Congratulations, Kashe!
Photo Courtesy of Fox 11 Los Angeles