Mensa IQ challenge: A 4-year-old self-taught boy is Britain's youngest member of the high-IQ score club

A self-taught 4-year-old has become the UK's youngest member of Mensa. The boy is well-versed to read, and counting, including in Mandarin and has become the youngest member to enter the elite club with a high-IQ score.

A British boy, named Teddy Hobbs from Portishead, Somerset taught himself to read while watching television and playing on his tablet, only at the age of two without his parents even noticing.

Teddy's mother, Beth said that they thought initially he was just making sounds while playing on his tablet, but to their surprise, they later realised he was actually speaking out loud numerals in the Chinese language.

Her mother told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, "He chooses a new topic of something to be interested in every couple of months or so, it seems. Sometimes it’s numbers. It was times tables for a while – that was a very intense period – then countries and maps and learning to count in different languages".

"He was playing on his tablet – we’ve put appropriate games like Thomas the Tank Engine on – and he was sat there … making the sounds I just didn’t recognise and I asked him what it was and it was, ‘Oh mummy, I’m counting in Mandarin".

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Hobbs said her son’s IQ score, which places him inthe 99.5 percentile for his age, presents particular parenting challenges.

Teddy's mother said that his sondoesn't know right now that he has achieved something, and that they will like to keep things that way only.

"He’s starting to figure out now that his friends can’t read and he’s a bit like ‘why?’. But it’s really important for us to keep him grounded. If he can do these things, fine. But he sees it as just ‘OK, well I can read but my friend can run faster than me. We’ve all got our individual talents", said her mother, Beth.

What is the Mensa test?

Mensa is the largest and one the oldest high-IQ societiesin the world. It is a non-profit organisation open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test.

Mensa only accepts people who score in the top 2 per cent of the general population on a supervised IQ test.Teddy took this hour-long test when he was only three years and seven months old.

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