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Toddler becomes card-carrying Mensa member

The spelling of simple words can be a challenge for kids twice or three times one Kentucky girl’s age but that is exactly what alerted Isla McNabb’s parents that their 2-year-old was more advanced than they realized.

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Amanda and Jason McNabb told The Washington Post that they started to notice blocks spelling out items in their home — C-H-A-I-R next to a chair, S-O-F-A next to the couch.

Isla started sounding out words at about the age of 2. Her mom and dad kept a list of words she could read — 100, 200, 500 words is where they stopped keeping track, they told the newspaper.

When they told their daughter’s pediatrician, the doctor just assumed that Isla had memorized the stories, but when the McNabbs told her to read a poster on the exam room wall, and she did, the pediatrician realized that she was able to read, WAVE reported.

Spelling and reading are not the only skills that she’s excelling at. She also can count, count backward and do simple math including subtraction. She also can write.

The couple had Isla’s IQ tested in May when she was about 2 1/2 years old. Later in the month, they got the results that their toddler tested in the top 1% of the population, the Post reported.

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The test consisted of solving puzzles and recognizing words, WAVE reported.

Her score qualified her to join Mensa, a group that honors people who score in the top 2% of IQ tests. She’s now one of the youngest members, the Post reported.

Isla’s now one of the youngest members of the group in the country.

In 2019, there were three members of the group under the age of 4, including a 2-year-old from Texas and 56 who were younger than 6 years old in the group of about 50,000 members, WFAA reported at the time.

While she’s among the smartest of the smartest according to the results on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, she still is a normal child, watching “Bluey,” “Blippi” and making friends at preschool.

The McNabbs said that they may have her skip kindergarten but for the time being are allowing her to learn at her own speed, Spectrum News reported.

“She led us down a very interesting path, but we just let her take the reins and see where it goes from there,” Jason McNabb told Spectrum News.