Boy with IQ of 142 is youngest Mensa member

ELIJAH Catalig’s (pic) favourite pastimes before bed are not typical of the average two-year-old.

He solves patterns, reads storybooks and plays IQ games meant for kids five years his senior.

Aged just two years and six months, Elijah is the youngest member of Mensa Singapore – the society for people with IQs in the top 2% of the population.

Mensa Singapore was registered in 1989 and is recognised by Mensa International to be one of only 20 countries worldwide to qualify for full National Mensa status.

There are currently over 4,000 Mensans in Singapore.

Elijah’s mother Laura Teo, 38, said: “He can go on for hours if he likes something, and we get more tired than him.”

She and her husband Anatoly Catalig, 40, who is self-employed in business development, took their son for a psychological test last month and discovered he has an IQ score of 142, which places him at the 99.7 percentile.

Only seven children around his age have joined the local chapter of Mensa in the past four years. The youngest on its record is a boy aged two years and two months when Mensa accepted him last November. An average child has an IQ of 100.

Elijah took the Stanford Binet test which measures analytical and reasoning abilities. The IQ test, with a score of up to 160, is used widely around the world.

He was tested on logic, mathematics, picture puzzles and number sequences. He scored the highest – 149 – in quantitative reasoning, the ability to use numerical skills to solve problems.

According to the report, his intellect is that of a four- to five- year-old. He is strong in using logical thinking and maths to solve picture problems and identifying visual patterns and sequences.

Teo, who works in a bank’s compliance department, said Elijah mastered the alphabet – both small and capital letters – before he turned one. About a year later, he could count up to 50, and add and subtract with single-digit numbers.

“He’s a fast learner – I taught him once and he remembered everything,” said Teo. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network