The Mensa’s youngest member is a four-year-old British boy who taught himself to read as a baby. Teddy is from Portishead, Somerset, and he knows how to count to 100 in six languages, including Mandarin. For those who are unaware, Mensa only accepts people who score in the 98th percentile or higher on an intelligence test that they have approved.

The mother of this child prodigy, Beth Hobbs, revealed that her son learnt to read at the age of 26 months “by watching children’s television and replicating the sounds of letters.” “He started tracing the letters, so when we sent him back to nursery following Covid lockdown, we told them we felt he’d taught himself how to read,” she added.

Teddy Hobbs, four years old, is the United Kingdom’s youngest Mensa member.
“We had a phone call back from the nursery, who’d sent a pre-school teacher to check, who said ‘Sure he can read!’” Beth recalled of her Mensa child. She also stated, “Every couple of months or so, he chooses a topic to be interested in, and sometimes it’s numbers, it was times tables for a bit, which was hard, countries and maps, then learning to count in different languages.” Her son’s ability to read and count in other languages, on the other hand, astounded her. “He was playing on his iPad, making these strange sounds that I couldn’t place, and I asked him what it was, and he responded, ‘Mummy, I’m counting in Chinese.’”

Teddy was inducted into the Mensa when he was only three years old. As a result, he is the organization’s youngest current member. Nonetheless, his parents are more concerned with their child enjoying a well-rounded childhood than with steering him in a specific direction. Mrs. Hobbs remarked, “He’s starting to figure out that his pals can’t read yet, and he don’t know why, but it’s very essential for us to keep him grounded. If he can do these things, that’s great, but he sees it as ‘Sure, I can read, but my friend can run faster than me,’ so we all have our unique abilities.”