A pediatrician was stunned when she started reading aloud from a poster in her office. Isla can also do basic math – like addition and subtraction. Despite her precocious intellect, Isla remains a normal toddler, enjoying ‘Bluey’ an Australian cartoon about a cattle dog. Already in kindergarten, Isla is rude, makes friends easily. Dr. McNabb has high hopes for Isla who will likely skip kindergarten.
“Hopefully it will lead to a scholarship”
She led us down a very interesting path, but we let her take the reins and see where she goes from there,” he said. “Hopefully it will lead to a scholarship — maybe Harvard or MIT one day.” Being the smartest kid in class presents its own challenges, said Mensa spokesman Charles Brown. “It’s not always easy to be the smartest person in the room, especially for young kids. “They often don’t fit well into the education system and we recognize that. And so, we have some resources that we offer to kids and their parents.” In Britain, the country’s most famous prodigy was Ruth Lawrence, who, aged 10, was the youngest student ever admitted to Oxford University in 1981. Now a mother of four, she teaches mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For Isla, it’s in the future, and the McNabbs are dealing with some of the more trivial problems a toddler presents. “She can read well beyond her toddler years, but we’re still working on potty training!” Dr. McNabb added. “Well, she’s still an average two-year-old at that.”
