The pintsize prodigy, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., with his parents and 8-year-old sister, Tiara (who is also a Mensa member), also received a congratulatory letter from President Barack Obama just in time for his big day. “I sensed there was something different about Tanishq when he was 6 months old because he became very interested in clocks and numbers — he started counting and could point out numbers when he saw them in books,” Tanishq’s mother, veterinarian Taji Abraham, tells Yahoo Shine. “He would also stare very intently at photos and ask so many questions. I always wondered, ‘Why is he so curious?’”
By the time Tanishq was 2, he was adding and subtracting numbers. “I told my husband that Tanishq was very smart, but he said I was just a proud mom,” she says. “But a friend who was a kindergarten teacher insisted that Tanishq was different.” Abraham and her husband wanted to test their son’s IQ but were advised to wait until he was a little older to get a more accurate reading. When Tanishq turned 4, he scored in the 99.9th percentile on an IQ test (Abraham declined to provide her son’s precise IQ).
Abraham had heard about Mensa, a society for people with high IQs, and hoped that a membership would lead to better educational opportunities. After Mensa confirmed the boy’s IQ by having him undergo more testing, Tanishq was admitted into the group. (Mensa requires members to have an IQ in the 98th percentile.)