OLDHAM COUNTY, Ky. — The youngest member of Mensa, a society for people with high IQs, lives in Crestwood, Kentucky and she’s just two years old.

Isla McNabb is your typical two-year-old, except for the fact she scored in the 99th percentile of intelligence for her age.


What You Need To Know

  • Two-year-old Isla McNabb became the youngest member of Mensa

  • Mensa is the world's largest organization for people with high IQs

  • McNabb scored in the 99th percentile of intelligence for her age 

Mensa boasts nearly 140,000 members worldwide, and an average of six million Americans eligible. Now, one Oldham County toddler is a part of that statistic. She may seem like a typical two-year-old at first glance, but she can do things no one ever imagined.

“She has always had an affinity for the alphabet, so we got her all kinds of blocks and magnets—multiple copies of the alphabet—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 mother, Amanda McNabb, said.

Isla knows just about every word you throw her way, her family said. She’s even picked up some light reading along the way.

Isla’s parents, Amanda and Jason, even discovered “mom” scribbled in crayon on a cardboard box.

“I noticed that on the box it said ‘mom,’ so I asked my husband, ‘was it you? Have you been working with her?’ He said no, I didn’t do this,” Amanda McNabb recalled. “So I went back and looked at the security camera footage of the living room and sure enough saw her with the crayon writing mom.”

That’s when they decided a child psychologist should be the judge. After two days of testing, the results confirmed what the family already knew: Isla was smart, but they didn’t know how smart.

“Dr. Amend was saying typically these kids will have asynchronized development so they might be really far ahead, really advanced in one category and might be fairly normal or on par or maybe lag behind in some other categories,” Jason McNabb said. “She scored superior in everything and very superior in the knowledge category, so it definitely shocked us. We didn’t expect that.”

Isla has since become the youngest member of Mensa, one of the world’s most famous organizations for people with high IQs. It’s safe to say this gifted child has a bright future ahead.

“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 said. “Hopefully it will lead to a scholarship—maybe Harvard or MIT one day.”

The McNabbs believe Isla will probably skip kindergarten, but for now, they’re letting her learn at her own pace.