It seems at best naive to have gone to the press with this, and I wouldn't have. Being proud of your child isn't a crime and it's definitely not synonymous with being "pushy" or hot housing, but it's hard to see how press attention is in the boy's best interests.
People's knee jerk instinct to cut down tall poppies is one reason for that, and it's evident on this thread.
Yes, early reading or counting can simply be rote memorisation and recitation. Or there can be deep understanding, and you can tell the difference if you look and listen properly. Similarly, early reading/counting can be the result of heavy parental coaching. Or they can be the result of a very bright cookie grabbing hold of the standard resources that we're all encouraged to expose our toddlers and preschoolers to (CBeebies, number play toys, some books, maybe a phonics chart at nursery, some educational app thingummy which you throw tothem in desperation so you can get on with stuff for a few minutes) which the child then runs with by themselves at 110mph. Just like most children soak up spoken language and learn to speak without that much conscious effort from the parents. It's not necessarily coaching.
If he is autistic, or ND in some other way, then that is in addition to not instead of his high IQ and he will be twice exceptional/DME. The parents seem alive to the possibility.
For those saying - just let them be toddlers- it's not that simple. All children develop on their own schedule, they're not robots. But it goes with the territory for exceptionally bright kids to be a LOT more out of sync/out of step with peer averages, than is usual. They can seem as though they're many ages at once. Those "precocious" seeming skills totally don't preclude other sorts of fun like jumping in puddles, and playing let's pretend tea parties with play doh biscuits, and running round the woods being a dinosaur, etc etc. But equally, you and the child can do all those things until the cows come, and it won't stop the out-of-syncness and the precocious skills and interests. You have to follow the child and let them be themselves.
For those saying - but he's not that different, he's 1 in every 100 or 200 - that really is enough to make things challenging in a school system that's designed around the average. I looked it up and 70% of us are within 1 standard deviation of the average IQ, 95% of us are within 2 SDs. This child is on the cusp of 3 SDs from the average. At the other end of the bell curve, we see this degree of difference as mild to moderate general learning difficulty and provide services and support. If you're 1 in 200 you won't have another child like you in an average primary school year, certainly not in a classroom. The odds of finding friends at school who share interests and personalities that click AND a similar desire for complexity, is going to be a lot more stacked against him. The pace of the curriculum will be difficult and frustrating, just as much as if he was struggling to keep up but without much support because it's hard to justify resources for children who are already exceeding age norms. So it's different enough, and he and his parents will need support.