Published: May 11, 2009 06:39 pm      

THEREFORE I AM: 156 IQ and not yet potty trained

If you’re not sure what the capital of Indonesia is, ask a 2-year-old. Well, I guess you shouldn’t ask any 2-year-old. There are only a few who would give you an answer that doesn’t cite The Wiggles. Elise Tan-Roberts is one of the few. At 2, Elise has become the youngest member of Mensa, with an estimated IQ of 156.

(It’s Jakarta, by the way, and, no, I didn’t know that either.)

Any parent with a modicum of imagination fantasizes in the delivery room about what may come of their newborns. Will my son play center field for the Yankees? Will my daughter become the first female U.S. president? An astronaut? Best-selling author? A world-famous industrialist, perhaps? It’s all pretty unrealistic, but we do it anyway, at least for a few moments. When your baby is born, there are no limitations.

I’m sure Elise’s parents had pie-in-the-sky thoughts in the delivery room, too. The difference is that theirs might actually pan out.

I read about Elise in London’s Daily Mail online newspaper. Before her first birthday, she was recognizing her written name. She could count to 10 by the time she was 16 months — now she can do it in Spanish. Her parents are bright, but certainly not brilliant, at least not by Mensa standards.

Mensa is the world’s largest high-IQ society. To be eligible for membership, you’ll need to ring the bell above the 98th percentile on certain standardized IQ tests. Incidentally, Elise’s score ranks her in the top 99.8 percentile for children her age. A lot of people think that you need a score of at least 150 for Mensa, but it varies depending on what test you’re taking. Suffice it to say, this isn’t the ragin’ kegger party crowd.

In case you were wondering, the person to whom the highest IQ is attributed is Marilyn vos Savant. You’ve probably seen her Sunday column in Parade magazine in which she answers readers’ questions. Some of the questions are quite clever, but many, I’ve noticed, are a complete waste of newsprint, but that’s another column for another day. (Who cares what a genius’ favorite flavor of ice cream is?) 

Marilyn hit 228 in one test, and that’s the number you’ll see in The Guinness Book of World Records. Apparently other tests have pegged her IQ as “low” as 167, but let’s just say she’s just about the sharpest knife in the drawer and leave it at that.

As a soon-to-be-teacher, I’ve wondered how I’d handle a kid who is head-and-shoulders smarter than I. I’m a fairly bright guy, but I’m not Mensa material, and I’ll never sniff the wispy clouds in the 99.8 percent stratosphere. I suppose I’ll just do my best to challenge the super-smart kids and make sure I don’t do anything to derail their journey or discourage them from learning. That would be awful, like someone tossing you the keys to their new Ferrari and then proceeding to wrap it around a telephone pole — only worse. Kids aren’t Ferraris.

Unless some adult wraps Elise around a telephone pole, I suspect we’ll be hearing her name again in the not too distant future.

If I were her parents, I’d be thrilled but also a little apprehensive. How could you not be? There must be a fine line between “challenging” and “pushing.” You certainly wouldn’t want a child like that not to strive toward greatness, but a parent could push too hard and incite some serious, serious problems. 

Who among us has experience in raising a super-genius? I don’t. What if your genius baby grows up to be “only” a judge or a doctor or a rocket scientist? Are those jobs worthy of a child prodigy or should she have been more? Maybe she has the capacity to be mentioned in the same breath with DaVinci, Einstein and Socrates. Who can say? It’s a delicate thing.

I do know this: Until a baby comes along who can solve quadratic equations in his strained peas, Elise probably will be Mensa’s youngest inducted member for at least a little while.

David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@tds.net.