A Black 2-year-old from Los Angeles has become the youngest American member of Mensa, the oldest, and most prominent high IQ society in the world.
Kashe Quest’s mother, Sukhjit Athwal, said she recognized early on that the toddler who has an IQ of 146, had impeccable memory and learning skills, Fox 11 Los Angeles reported.
"We started to notice her memory was really great. She just picked up things really fast and she was really interested in learning. At about 17, 18 months, she had recognized all the alphabet, numbers, colors, and shapes," Athwal said.
The young genius can also identify all 50 states by shape and position on a map. At only 2 years old, she is learning to read, can sign over 50 signs in ASL and can identify elements on the periodic table by their symbols. Kashe is even learning a second language in Spanish.
Although she picks up things fast, Athwal acknowledged that her daughter is still a child.
"At the end of the day, she's in that toddler stage. So she very much is still a normal 2-year-old where we have negotiations, we have tantrums, we have everything and it's different because the way we communicate with her, it has to be different because she's able to understand just a little bit more," Athwal said.
The girl’s IQ score of 146 indicates that Quest is considered “very gifted or highly advanced,” according to the Stanford-Binet IQ test website.
The Hill reports that Athwal says she has struggled to find early childcare "that catered to what she was able to do."
The mother, who has experience as an educator, opened up a preschool and teaches her daughter and 11 other kids. While Athwal understands her child’s potential, she said she wants to ensure that her daughter “has a childhood” and that nothing is forced upon her.
“We're kind of going at her pace and we want to just make sure that she is youthful for as long as she can be,” she said.
According to The New York Times, the youngest person to ever join Mensa was a young boy from the United Kingdom who scored a 142 on the Stanford-Binet test. Muhammad Haryz Nadzim joined the society when he was 2 years and 4 months old.
Mensa, which was founded in 1946, has grown in size to nearly 145,000 members in 100 countries around the world. It only admits individuals who score in the top 2% of the population.
The ultimate goal of the organization is to create a society that is non-political and free from all racial or religious groupings. Mensa translates to “table” in Latin, and the organization is named in reference to its round-table society where ethnicity, color, national origin, age, politics, educational and social background aren’t important factors.
