A two-year-old Californian native is the newest and youngest member of American Mensa, a group of highly intelligent people who have scored in the top 2 percent of the general population on a standardized intelligence test, People reports.
Kashe Quest has an IQ of 146 while the average IQ in America is 100. According to her mother, Sukhjit Athwal, she noticed from an early age that her daughter could comprehend a lot of things more than her peers.
The toddler’s score on her standardized intelligence test does not come as a surprise because she can count to 100, identify all the 50 states on the map by names, identify elements on the periodic table by their symbols, and knows more than 50 signs in American Sign Language.
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“We started to notice her memory was really great. She just picked up things really fast and she was really interested in learning,” Athwal told KTTV, Fox 11 affiliate. “At about 17, 18 months, she had recognized all the alphabet, numbers, colors, and shapes.”
The Stanford-Binet test for high IQ individuals notes that anyone with scores between 145 and 160 is seen as “genius or near-genius,” while the Cattell test classifies the top 2 percent range to be between 132 and 148.
“Kashe is certainly a remarkable addition to American Mensa,” Trevor Mitchell, the executive director of American Mensa, told People via a statement. “We are proud to have her and to be able to help her and her parents with the unique challenges that gifted youth encounter.”
Kashe is learning to read English and speak in Spanish at the age of two, but Athwal shares she is still a regular toddler. “At the end of the day, she’s in that toddler stage. So she very much is still a normal two-year-old where we have negotiations, we have tantrums, we have everything and it’s different because the way we communicate with her, has to be different because she’s able to understand just a little bit more,” Athwal said.
The tendency to overdo things or rush Kashe into so many activities at once is something her parents dread. They have decided to let her enjoy being a child and give her the needed guidance she needs to navigate life.
Athwal has opened a pre-school where she teaches Kashe and ten other children.
Being a part of Mensa is a big deal. The American Mensa has over 50,000 members and it is the largest national Mensa operating under the auspices of Mensa International, Ltd which has more than 130,000 members across the globe. “Mensa members range in age from 2 to 106. They include engineers, homemakers, teachers, actors, athletes, students, and CEOs, and they share only one trait — high intelligence,” according to Mensa’s site.
