MENSA Inducts 2-Year-Old, And Why We Should Care October 21, 2009
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
A toddler, only 2 years of age, recently became the youngest member of MENSA:
The Telegraph reports that Oscar Wrigley was assessed by the Gifted Children’s Information Center in Solihull, England, as having an IQ (Intelligence Quotient) of at least 160 — or about the same as Albert Einstein.
But maybe you don’t trust the Gifted Children’s Information Center. Well then, take a look for yourself and behold the genius of a 2-year-old:
Kid knows his meat
“His vocabulary is amazing. He’s able to construct complex sentences,” Oscar’s mother Hannah added. “The other day he said to me, ‘Mummy, sausages are like a party in my mouth.'”
Heck with MENSA – this kid’s destined to become the youngest AoSHQ Moron evah.
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Innocent Bystanders 
heheheheh
I agree
Hah!
The idea that you can measure the IQ of a child at the age of 2 is absolutely ludicrous – especially given the difficulty of measuring the IQ of an ADULT beyond the 140 (Genius) level.
My daughter is 2 years and a couple of months and can put together a jigsaw puzzle of the 50 states (not Obama’s 57) and knows the names of every state. She mastered it in 3 days flat. Every person who has ever encountered her says she’s a genius, but I would never presume to subject her to this kind of testing.
She’s 2. She deserves to be allowed to be what all 2 year old kids should be. Quite frankly I’m pretty disgusted with the parents for even submitting her to MENSA, with MENSA for this blatant publicity stunt, and with whoever claimed that he could accurately measure the IQ of a child of this age.
It’s no different an exploitation than pageant moms and equally as damaging psychologically.
It’s sad.
Maybe MENSA has adopted Nobel Peace Prize standard.
Quite frankly I’m pretty disgusted with the parents for even submitting her to MENSA,
Yeah, MENSA is not very selective. They should have submitted him to the Triple 9 Society at least.
I keed, I keed.
But I thought the Shape SHifting Lizard People was the club to be in.
Shows what I know
What bullshit.
Kids are stupid. Fact!
*not comfy with this sorta thing*
Thanks for your story JimB.
Kids, smart or less-than, need normalcy, acceptance, love, and a happy home to grow up in more than being labeled like this. Sheesh.
Daughter Michael was tested in our home by a “Parents as Teachers” educator around age 2. We were informed that she was very gifted. We had suspected this, since she was speaking in complete complex sentences at about 18 months and we attributed some of this to the fact that she had a very talkative older brother helping her learn the language.
We were encouraged to allow her to learn at a faster pace and not to hold her back. We also were warned that her gross motor skills might lag behind other kids (manifested as lookin’ clumsy sometimes). They suggested that we keep her involved and developing those essential physical skills also — like making a game of skipping with her — believe it or not — or playing with a soccer ball.
We appreciated the heads up, but resisted forcing or pushing her beyond where she herself was ready to go, socially and emotionally.
Cathy,
I have gotten to the place where I believe any kid who has involved parents is now going to be labeled as gifted. We have dumbed down our education system and declined as a society to the point that neglected kids are dragging down the test scores. What we consider gifted today would probably be considered normal in the 50s.
I have two kids who have been labeled as gifted and put on that track, I still think they are just normal kids who happen to have supportive parents and a stable home life.
The fact is, all kids are dumb as f*ck. Some just have a better platform to launch off of.
I also think it is an industry, most parents LOVE the fact that their kids are labeled gifted and love receiving the mailers from private schools and invites to special camps and programs. Self indulgent morons.
I don’t get me started on this.
Really. i’ll be more boring than usual.
IGo Car in Go!
Some agreement with Uni. Kids who do their homework every night will be in the “advanced” classes.
I was once gifted….but they sent me back. I now consider myself re-gifted. My natural parents then decided to keep me …well….let me stay at their place. No hard feelings and I’m quite down with it………in a dark little room in the basement.
But look at him. He’s darling! Look at his little face.
My son taught me how to play chess when he was 7. I’ve never beaten him. The only thing that kid is advanced in is bullshit.
Did he teach you how to do the L-shaped moves with the horseys? Sometimes kids leave that out on purpose. Try it, I bet you kick his ass.
He taught me that, and something else called “castleing” or something with the castle looking thing and the king. He’s full of it.
As if a bishop can actually move diagnonally. WTF is that? He’s LYING.
If he mentioned that thing about the pawn guy making it all the way to the other team’s end zone and becoming a queen, that’s for real, except it’s actually called “coming out”.
Kids are lying deceitful little shits.
I brought this thread up with my lovely wife who is an educator and one of the smartest people I know. She actually tests kids for this kind of shit.
Her opinion…Most “gifted” kids just have good homes, nothing more, nothing less.
I then made a pass at her and she rejected me, smart woman.
All kids are born brilliant.
It is their being around us that dumbs them down.
That, and adolescence.
Not really OT, but check out this graphic –
http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/gr8_state.asp
(requires flash)
Her opinion…Most “gifted” kids just have good homes, nothing more, nothing less.
True dat. Some years back while employed as a professional Director of Christian Education we learned how to use Search Institute’s 40 Assets in developing our own church-wide programs. These assets are thought to help develop healthy and successful individuals.
Stuff is based on longitudinal studies that have been going on and been retested for many years… Considered pretty reliable, I think.
Gifted education in the US really upsets me.
First, being gifted carries a significant risk of failure in our educational system, so having a gifted kid is as problematic as it is a blessing. Parents shouldn’t be so quick to apply the ‘gifted’ label to their little cherubs.
Second, our educational system still has no idea how to teach gifted kids – it did a better job 40 years ago than it does today (of course, that’s pretty much true of kids at all levels). They keep claiming that gifted kids ‘learn differently,’ but when teaching them they simply advance them a grade or two. Or give them completely useless ‘enrichment’ sessions. Feh.
Third, I hate the ‘gifted’ nomenclature. The way I look at it, kids with IQs over 130 need a specialized educational track. They’re not ‘gifted,’ they’re just really bright, but they still need a more challenging educational experience. The kids who are Twilight-Zone-eerie-smart don’t start cropping up until the 150-160 range. Those are what I’d call ‘gifted.’
we learned how to use Search Institute’s 40 Assets in developing our own church-wide programs.
I think that even if it had nothing to do with educational achievement, that’s the sort of environment everybody should want for their kids.
Geoff, our effort was to encourage parents to join us in the church environment to value and preserve what could KEEP or RESTORE those assets. Biggest problem was the secular world, including education, TV & entertainment, and peer influences that butt up against those Assets.
I recall years before we had kids — a study I read about — that assessed that most of the “creativity” borne in a child is sorta stomped out of them by about age 5 or 6.
Duh! Yah think edumication systems have anything to do with that.?
And about “giftedness”… EVERY single kid that I ever had a chance to relate to as an individual — whether in my professional role as a Christian educator, as a youth leader, counselor, or even working with individual kids who were “troubled” through mentoring programs, crisis-intervention, or trauma-room encounters — EVERY single kid had GIFTS.
EVERY single kid had GIFTS.
Take Mrs. Peel, for example. She’s a great dancer.
Biggest problem was the secular world, including education, TV & entertainment, and peer influences that butt up against those Assets.
The tragedy of the commons strikes again.
EVERY single kid had GIFTS.
Yes, that’s the other problem with the term – “gifted” isn’t very specific. We’re trying to select kids who need a specialized educational track for core academics, but calling them “gifted” brings in all sorts of misguided parents and educators who think that since the word “gifted” was used, gifted education should address every type of gift.
I wish I knew more about Mrs Peel before I met her.
I had a gift of sorts, I was a bad example.
I wish I knew more about Mrs Peel before I met her.
Hypergeek. Aggie. Patriot.
What else do you need to know?
I agree with Jim B that labeling this kid as a Mensa at the age of 2 is a poor decision on the part of the parents. Way to put the pressure on.
geoff is correct that G/T education sucks. I was always bored in class because it never moved fast enough for me. (Grad school has generally been a different story – I spent a lot of time in numerical methods being totally lost!) And, of course, there was the requisite shunning by the other kids.
That’s a big part of why I would want to homeschool any children I had – I’d want to make sure they were getting education appropriate to them, and I wouldn’t want them being treated the way I was treated. I don’t know what it is about schools. Scouts and sports and so forth generally don’t have that kind of behavior. (Although I did quit Girl Scouts when the girls turned vicious, because they played some seriously nasty pranks on one camping trip and I had the distinct feeling that I was their next victim…)
It’s ok, Scott. I didn’t know much about you either, except that lauraw thinks you are the shit, which I knew meant that you must indeed be quite…shitty? That can’t be right. Uh, anyway, NEXT time, we will know each other a little better.
What else do you need to know?
Really cute.
I’m sensing that there’s going to be a Cool Facts About Mrs. Peel post at some point?
Cool Fact About Mrs. Peel: She travelled back in time, to Jan. 1, 1940, to help the Aggies win their one and only national championship by revealing what plays Tulane would run during the game. She changed the course of history.
What else do you need to know?
One leg. Has a hard time selling her Cherokee. Loose morals.
You know the type.
Cute feet
I’m sensing that there’s going to be a Cool Facts About Mrs. Peel post at some point?
Not a bad idea, except I live close enough for her to drive up here and shoot me, and she knows my home address.
Physically, Mrs. Peel’s most interesting feature (ignoring her elfin size) is her eyes. They are quite arresting.
My wife took my daughter to some sort of testing dealie last year, and they told her she was “exceptionally gifted”. She couldn’t have inherited any type of smarts from me, that’s for sure.
She can write her name (which is a challenge, given what it is) and can print all of her upper case letters, and most of her lower case ones. SHe is obsessed with books and the various educational places here in town. She also seems to have a fondness for watching my dad or I assemble stuff, plant flowers, dig for worms, and work on our houses and ask what I am doing and why. Despite my shortcomings, I will always try to keep her spirit, imagination, and creativity from being stomped out.
What scares me is that she already has told me that school is boring for her, that she finishes most of her work early, and gets mad at the “stupid ones” (her words) who seem to be dragging everything down. The teacher has actually been slipping us some kindergarten work to do at home to keep her mind sharp. I just don’t want her to have the problems I did, where I would get distracted and bored, leading to some of my troubles in the class. Thankfully, The Jesuits cured me of that by assigning so much work, I couldn’t breathe.
Despite my shortcomings, I will always try to keep her spirit, imagination, and creativity from being stomped out.
OK, that’s all good . . . but,
Don’t try too hard.
Father-daughter relationships are tricky, and important for the girl. Big mistake if you try too hard. Relax.
Book recommendation:
Dancing in the Dark — The Shadow Side of Intimate Relationships
Authors: Douglas & Naomi Moseley (1994).
One point that the authors make very well is this: a common form of child endangerment is an opposite-sex parent that tries too hard to be the perfect and involved (and suffocating) parent that is constantly engaged with that child’s welfare. The clinical evidence is that such seemingly exemplary parents have an effect which is roughly equivalent to rape.
This did not happen so much in a bygone ere when families with four or five kids was normal. It happens a lot today with so many families which have only one or two kids.
Bottom line: the relationship between husband and wife should always be paramount. When parent-child relationships come first, something is wrong.
“The clinical evidence is that such seemingly exemplary parents have an effect which is roughly equivalent to rape.”
What complete bullshit.
Rape?
There needs to be a Rape equivalent to Godwin’s Law.
Where did you get such a finding?
Nowadays they call them helicopter parents. Always hovering.
There needs to be a Rape equivalent to Godwin’s Law.
That’s what the book said, and they acknowledged that it was a counter-intuitive finding. Keep in mind, they are only talking about long-term and lasting emotional consequences from helicopter parents (as KC aptly put it), not immediate trauma.
Yeah, that’s a problem all right. I forget the study, it’s about 10 years old now, but you’d be surprised at the number of strippers that pegged out those early aptitude tests.
Almost to a one, they also said “school is so boring”.
Even the ones making money for college.
Michael,
It is still bullshit.
I suspect that book was anti-man, maybe pro-feminist bullshit.
How the hell is a single father supposed to raise his daughter if a tight bond is comparable to rape?
Shit, I would say more women suffer from fathers not knowing how to relate to them after they hit puberty, talk about a mind fuck on your daughter.
Helicoptering parents are a symptom of the lack of social capital in their communities and of an excess of skills/abilities believed to be needed for future success. Helicoptering is a rational response to these parents’ perceptions of the world around them.
Today’s parents grew up with pictures of missing kids on the back of their milk cartons – why would you not expect them to hover? Today’s parents had it ingrained in them that kids MUST go to college (a good one) if they want them to succeed. Why would you not expect them to hover over the kids doing their homework and engage with them in many extracurricular activities?
I’m not saying you’re wrong. Just that the behavior has an explanation and what has to change is the perception.
Helicoptering is also parents living vicariously thru their kids’ “success” – the success brought about by parents helping their kids too much.
Getting personal coaches for five year old boys who are thought to be baseball prodigies, for example. I know one family who moved to Florida so their 7 year old could play baseball year round. He was THAT good – or at least they hoped he would be.
Some of the negative attributes given to parents who are involved can only come from shitty parents to make themselves feel better about how much they suck.
My parents sucked, I refuse to be like them.
Shitty uninvolved parents produce shitty children who take up time in class by acting out and screaming for attention.
Uninvolved or even passive parents can go suck knob.
>> Getting personal coaches for five year old boys who are thought to be baseball prodigies
crack dealers. Different study.
It’s a freaking’ crap-shoot, in my opinion. You do the best you can with what you got. Love your kids, do what YOU think is right, let the chips fall, hope for the best.
As my kids get older, I’m becoming less convinced that their environment has as much to do with their personalities and abilities as their DNA.
All good parents are invested in their kids success, for whatever reason. Helicoptering, in part, comes from an excess in the perception of the skill level the kids need to have to succeed. The Florida baseball people are making a perfectly rational decision if the perception of what their kid needs to succeed is correct. Trouble is, it often isn’t. Or perhaps we define success poorly.
I’m not disagreeing with you, Kevlarchick. Just kicking around reasons for “root causes”. I think Michael’s more right than he knows about the parents’ focus on their marriage.
Uniball — I hear ya, but there IS something to all this. You have your own view and reaction to your childhood, but we all need to watch that we don’t swing too far in the either/opposite direction. I’ve seen some very sad situations with kids whose parents were over-bonded. It’s not pretty.
Some parents simply get too involved and too close and the results are an unhealthy relationship and a child that might develop into an adult with unresolved issues. This is not all bullcrap, and the book Michael is talking about, which I have also read, is not anti-man feminist stuff.
All of us, we parents, need to check our attitudes and our personal ‘neediness’ for wrong thinking and motives — which I think can swing too far in either direction. When we encounter our kids, we need to be asking ourselves if we are overstepping boundaries or over projecting our own neediness or issues into our kids.
Oftentimes kids comply or cooperate with parents out of respect and love even though the kids are feeling smothered or uncomfortable with the intensity of too much intimacy, so kids are not always the best at speaking out for themselves. But kids need space for ‘satellization’ and we need to give them some breathing room to experience and grow up on their own a bit. Maybe ‘rape’ is a tad over-stated, but that ‘too close’ over-bonding thing is a boundary violation that can be very uncomfy and unhealthy.
Maybe uncomfortable and unhealthy, but rape? Again, I call Godwin’s Law-Rape Version on that.
What is the name of the book?
How To Rape Your Child By Sending them to Florida To Play Baseball
See #32.
It’s a freaking’ crap-shoot, in my opinion.
Yeah, the book sorta made that point, IIRC, meaning pretty much all parents screw up their kids somehow.
i read this headline, and thought it was about Obama winning another award. seriously. doesn’t he deserve to be MENSA? isn’t trying to be smaht good enough?
speaking of nit wits. try this one:
http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/
its called the Eyeballing Game, and u have to go through three iterations for an average score. the lower the better. mine are in the low 2. never cracked below 1.9 yet.
warning – its addictive. 😉
“His vocabulary is amazing. He’s able to construct complex sentences,” Oscar’s mother Hannah added. “The other day he said to me, ‘Mummy, sausages are like a party in my mouth.’”
I’m late to the game on this post, but I ran it past my wife (head of Pediatric Speech in our local Children’s Hospital) and she replied, “He said that because his parents let him watch the ridiculous Yo Gabba Gabba show on Nickelodeon”. Sure enough:
Figures.
And I’m informed I should have said clinical lead of Speech & Language Pathology in the Pediatric and Neonatal units, as saying head of Pediatric Speech just makes me sound stupid.
the ridiculous Yo Gabba Gabba show on Nickelodeon
That clip made the Teletubbies look smart. The target audience has to be under 2.
The target audience has to be under 2.
Hmmmm….. maybe The Littlest Mensa Member™ ain’t so smart after all?