TWO-YEAR-OLD 'MATILDA' BECOMES YOUNGEST EVER GIRL IN MENSA
By DUNCAN ROBERTSON
The Daily Mail
June 21, 2007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=463539&in_page_id=1770Her parents knew Georgia Brown was bright. After all, she could count to ten, recognised her colours and was even starting to dabble with French.
But it was only when their bubbly little two-year-old took an IQ test that her towering intellect was confirmed.
Georgia has become the youngest female member of Mensa after scoring a genius-rated IQ of 152.
This puts her in the same intellectual league, proportionate to her age, as physicist Stephen Hawking.
According to an expert in gifted children, Georgia is the brightest two-year-old she has ever met.
Parents Martin and Lucy Brown have always regarded their youngest child as a remarkably quick learner.
She was crawling at five months and walking at nine months.
By 14 months, she was getting herself dressed.
"She spoke really early -- by 18 months she was having proper conversations," Mrs Brown said.
"She would say, 'Hello I'm Georgia, I'm one'. She was also putting her shoes on and putting them on the right feet."
Georgia was so perceptive that after one outing to the theatre to see Beauty and the Beast she solemnly informed her parents: "I didn't like Gaston (the villain). He was mean and arrogant."
Struck by the similarities between her daughter and Matilda, the title character in the Roald Dahl story about a gifted child, Mrs Brown began to worry about Georgia's future education.
She contacted Professor Joan Freeman, a specialist educational psychologist, for advice.
Professor Freeman applied the standard Stamford-Binet Intelligence Scale test to Georgia and was amazed to find this was too limited to map her creative abilities.
She said: "Even at two she was very thoughtful.
"What Georgia did on some questions was of a higher quality than that which was necessary to gain a mark.
"She swept right through it like a hot knife through butter.
"I would ask her things like 'give me two blocks or give me ten blocks' and she would manage it as easily as you would expect a five-year-old.
"In one test I asked her to draw a circle and she did it so perfectly.
"Most adults would struggle to do that. Her circle was near to being perfect.
"It shows she can physically hold a pen well but also that she understands the concept of a circle."
Georgia, who is at nursery school, was also able to tell the difference between pink and purple -- a skill which most children learn at primary school age.
Professor Freeman said: "I said to her, 'What a pretty pink skirt, and you have tights and shoes to match'.
"She said, 'They're not pink, they're purple'. Most children go to school aged five and start to learn colours, let alone knowing the difference between pink and purple.
"I have to keep reminding myself that she is only two."
To the amazement of the family, who live in Aldershot, Hampshire, Georgia scored 152 points on the IQ test, putting her in the top 0.2 per cent of the population. Those with an average IQ would score around 100 points in the same test.
Georgia was then invited to join Mensa <http://www.mensa.org/>, the High IQ society whose members have IQs in the top 2 per cent of the population.
Georgia is one of only 30 Mensa members under the age of ten.
Mrs Brown, chief executive of a charity, believes Georgia has benefited by growing up as the youngest of five children.
She has been absorbing information from her older brothers and sisters and father, a self-employed carpenter, while not receiving any special treatment.
"There is always someone around to offer her something," her mother said.
"But she still has temper tantrums, like you wouldn't believe, throwing herself on the floor.
"She doesn't think she's better and cleverer than everyone else. She is a very kind and loving child."
Georgia, who has a "wicked sense of humour" is as busy as any toddler, enjoying a schedule of ballet classes, listening to stories, dancing, singing, sport and even watching the TV.
