Mensa is a social organisation for people who score in the top two per cent on a standardised intelligence test. It currently boasts around 140,000 members from over 90 countries.

Isla McNabb, the youngest member of the society, is from Crestwood, Kentucky. According to her mother, she has always had an “affinity for the alphabet” which is how they discovered her giftedness.

“She always had an affinity for the alphabet, so we got her all kinds of blocks and magnets,” Amanda McNabb, Isla’s mother, told Spectrum News, “and I would notice that the cat would have the letter C next to it, and then I would have the letter M.”

Isla’s parents decided to take her to a child psychologist after footage from the family security camera showed her scribbling “mom” with a crayon.

The child psychologist recommended intelligence tests and the scores revealed that the girl had “scored superior in everything and very superior in the knowledge category”.

Following these results, Isla received a Mensa membership card.

Isla’s parents also said that she picked up everything “they threw her way”.

She could do some light reading and had an extensive vocabulary of around 500 words. The parents admitted, however, that they had stopped counting after 200.

“Gifted children can feel isolated”

After the membership was confirmed, Mensa’s Charles Brown assured the McNabbs that the organisation would help Isla’s family by providing the resources they needed to manage the gifted child.

Gifted children can often feel isolated as their brain is working ten years ahead, according to Alan Thompson, the head of Mensa’s Gifted Youth Committee.

This is also why they gravitate more towards mentors and adults, and might have difficulty adjusting.

“Gifted children are very rare,” Thompson told 60 Minutes Australia in an interview, “they’re one in a million, maybe even one in five million.”

“She’s still an average two-year-old”

Despite Isla’s giftedness, her parents said that the toddler was still an average two-year-old.

“She can read well beyond her little years,” her father said, “but we’re still working on toilet training!”

The young girl also enjoys “Bluey”, an Australian cartoon about a cattle dog.

However, unlike other kids, the father told Spectrum News that she would likely skip kindergarten.

“She led us down a very interesting path, but we just let her take the reins and see where it goes from there,” he said. “Hopefully, it will lead to a scholarship—maybe Harvard or MIT one day.”