3 year old member of Mensa.

[Toddlerteaplease]

Article in todays Times, (don't know how to link)
AIBU to think this is ridiculous, let him be a toddler, nurture his interests of course. But this is OTT, and asking for trouble. Apparently he wants to go to university and be a doctor.

He needs a challenge and counting, learning languages is obviously something he enjoys so I don't see the harm.

Quite how mensa membership or a press release to the national newspapers benefits him, I don't know!

It never seems to end well when a child is publicly celebrated for being precocious in a particular area, whether it be sport, academic prowess, any random hobby.

The media loves precocious children but no one cares when they’re adults. Unfortunately, their identity is formed around their early talent.

Nurturing your child’s talent as a family/parent is one thing, splashing it over the media is another

Hyperlexia commonly found in ASD. Can't understand how this is MENSA membership is in any way helpful for this child. This child will likely need significant support with social aspects in life in order to happily manage relationships and school.

This, 100%

I think that if the story is on the back of a Mensa press release it is naive of the family to agree to it. Mensa is only intererested in promoting Mensa, to ensure self-preservation for an out-dated concept. Their entire ethos is based on the idea that clever people are somehow isolated and need help to find each other. They are very pre-internet (and their admin is very dated). One of my kids was a member for a year and it was a complete waste of money. He was sent some very niche and uninteresting newsletters and signed up for a Chess tournament that I had to withdraw him from because it would have involved us taking him (age 12) to the homes of adult strangers to play (which seemed daft when he can play chess online with people all over the world or in person with his friends at school).

Love this. The 'taught himself to read at 2' stuff is rote learning, decoding that's all. Give the same 2 year old written questions they can 'read' using common 2, 3,4 or 5 letter words and it quickly becomes obvious the child cannot 'read' but they can decode, spot patterns, solve simple problems very easily.

Exactly. Mensa has its own reasons for wanting to promote its members and they have to do what they have to do but anyone allowing their (tiny) kid to be used as a promotional tool like this is either very vain or astonishingly naive.

That poor kid is now regarded as public property by the media (see also Ruth Laurence, James Harries) and his progress will be relentlessly monitored. And he can't really win. If he is successful he is likely to become very arrogant and distanced from his peers and struggle to maintain normal relationships. If he fails an exam or gets bullied at school or screws up, like most kids do at some point, the papers will pillory him for not being quite so clever as he was at two.

Poor little thing.

Sounds like a potential candidate for the next parliamentary election in two years. We could do with some brains in Government, and I'm pretty certain a five year could do it better.

I have a question. Is it a case of just learning patterns though? Do these children understand meaning, context, and nuance. I am assuming not.

It’s not rote learning. Well, hyperlexia isn’t. I don’t think anyone fully understands how these children learn to read at 2 or 3 (sometimes younger) but they do. But they are neurodivergent, and I always explain my son’s hyperlexia as a facet of his autistic brain.

My son was speech delayed and I didn’t know he could read until he started properly talking at 3.5+

I first thought that his “reading” was recognising letters and guessing, or recognising logos, but he once sat in the back of the car and read the name of the radio station from
the display. We would go to the supermarket and he’d be walking around reading the signs: “meat, fish, white bread” and street signs “why’s it London Road?”

He started school able to read all of the tricky words like where, were, there etc. What he never did was learn to count in six languages because I didn’t hothouse him.

Like I said in a previous post, it’s not rote learning. Hyperlexic/autistic kids are gestalt language processors, meaning they process words as a whole rather than in parts (as in phonics - phonics was pointless for my child!)

Whether they understand meaning and context depends whether they’re being given Peppa Pig or Harry Potter at 3 😄 Hyperlexia does go hand in hand with comprehension issues, because their ability to read words far exceeds their knowledge of what words mean. And this issue persists as they get older and the texts and comprehension exercises they’re given at school get more complex. You can imagine a literal thinker of an autistic kid finding it baffling to be given a question about subtext or something that isn’t explicitly written in the text.

We had to give my 4yo son nursery books and fairy tales, the sort you read to a child at bed time because he could read books for 8-9 year old but was not emotionally able for the content. And while he’s extremely bright, his “worst” topic is probably English comprehension.

The problem with autism is it gives with one hand but takes with the other. My son is 9, intellectually he’s like a 14 year old but emotionally more like a six year old. It’s hard to reconcile that type of age gap! The gap become more evident as he goes through the school and I’m convinced there will be some sort of crisis when puberty hits. Yeah nice to have a clever child but it brings a load of worry.

How on earth do you know this child's entire life?

To a lesser extent it’s the same when people say my two year old can count to 20, isn’t that amazing. Yes it is but it’s memory really isn’t it? Same with learning the alphabet. My toddler knew if we were going into a Morrisons supermarket that wasn’t our regular one not because she could read the sign but because she recognised it.

My DS could read at 2 and it wasn't rote learning at all - he definitely understood what he was reading and could chat to you about it. I know people don't really believe this unless you've seen it but he could have long conversations with adults at that age and had a very good level of comprehension. As with PPs it was sometimes hard to find the right things to give him to read - he was "stuck" on a low reading book level for a long time as although he could read the higher ones he wasn't emotionally ready for them (eg books about WW2 with details a 9-10 year old would be fine with but a yo definitely couldn't handle! Also books about school that assumed the reader was a junior school child and dealt with friendship or family issues a reception child couldn't get their head around).

Beyond their comprehension

I always feel a bit of a pang for gifted children. The world isn't made for NT people. They often end up burned out and depressed. I hope his future is different.

It’s the pushy parents that are the worst (and the parents of Teddy, all over the TV and radio, count as pushy in my opinion - they are revelling in the kudos of having a “gifted” child).

I see them on FB groups refusing to acknowledge their child’s autistic traits (they don’t have friends because they’re too gifted to socialise with their peers, apparently) and push and push to have them moved up one or even two years at school… like sitting their GCSEs when they should really be in Year 9 is actually a good idea. I find it really sad. If only they’d spend as much time nurturing their social and emotional well-being as their intellect.

Meh at the idea the media coverage is going to ruin the kid's life. There are stories like this all the time, and while I agree it's not necessarily a brilliant idea it's pretty much tomorrow's chip paper stuff.

Also, can we knock the idea on the head that gifted children are doomed to a life of maladjustment and misery? Lots of very clever people are perfectly well adjusted, happy, competent adults. I work with loads of them.

He might be autistic. Isn't hyperlexia a sign of autism?

The problem with gifted children is that they get lots of attention for being children. And when they grow up the attention fades away, and it can be really tough for them.
Having a university degree at 12yo is cool and unusual, but in 10 years time you're a 22yo with a university degree, and there's nothing unusual about it anymore. You need bigger and bigger achievements, and it's harder to do once you're out of high school.

I could read at 3 and was always advanced for my age with anything to do with words. My academic results were very good but not exceptional and I became a solicitor. Being good with words helps me every day, but I'm not a prodigy!

I don't see the point of sitting a Mensa test. My cousin is a member and has it displayed on her linkedin, but it's probably because she's insecure about dropping out of uni after first year. She has a high paying job regardless.

Most of my extended family could probably join Mensa after taking the test, but don't have any need to.

I wouldn't sit one because I know I get treated a lot better than other people with my diagnosis (bipolar) due to my job. I don't like the idea that IQ is used to make having a certain diagnosis (autism etc) appealing.

I don't like the idea that IQ is used to make having a certain diagnosis (autism etc) appealing.

Wtf? More appealing? You either have autism because you meet the criteria or you don’t. Ffs.

Look at the way the media treat a person with autism who is 'gifted' vs one who isn't.

It’s so tasteless people speculating that he might be autistic just because many high Iq people are. The categories of people commenting seem to be “HA! Well he might be autistic” “HA! He probably isn’t that bright” “HA! My child can do this too”

why can’t people just be nice? Why does everyone have to be competitive or envious? I totally don’t think the family should have gone to the media but why do people here have to be such dicks about a child.

It is possible to be a genius without being autistic, whilst still being a happy and contented child and without having pushy parents. The exceptional do exist. Not everyone who has read early or been good at something ends up a genius, no. But a few people do.

people on MN are so genuinely hateful sometimes