Child Geniuses Among Us ; 4-year-old preschooler joins MENSA

Sept. 6, 2010 - PRLog -- (Sacramento, CA) Tiara Abraham, a 4-year-old, is one of the youngest applicants accepted to Mensa. In order to be accepted to the oldest and the largest High IQ Society in the world, Tiara had to score in the top 2 percent on a standardized, accepted intelligence test. She scored in the 99 percentile.  Her parents, Mr. Bijou & Dr. Taji Abraham saw the telltale signs of her high IQ since Tiara was 2.5 years old and decided to get her tested later.  At 4 years 5 months old, she was administered the 1 to 2-hour long, a standardized IQ test by a licensed psychologist specialized in highly gifted children. Tiara scored in the 99 percentile. Tiara now follows her 7-year-old brother, Tanishq Abraham’s footsteps; he joined Mensa at around the same age when he scored 99.9 percentile in the IQ test. Tanishq is happy to have his younger sister join him; they both are one of the youngest Mensans in the country that has a membership of about 56,000. Mensa was started in 1946 in England and now worldwide has more than 100,000 members. According to American Mensa, 41 percent of its members are baby boomers between the ages of 47 and 64, and there are more than 1,700 families with two or more Mensa members. The American Mensa has about 1300 young members with most young Mensans that fall in the age group of 9 to 18 years old.

Just like her brother, Tiara is advanced in Math & English at a young age and is currently doing 1st to 2nd grade level. “I love to learn,” says Tiara. Her passion is writing and drawing. She has learned the art of cursive writing and she loves to write in cursive these days. She is curious about everything and asks many questions to her parents and her 7-year-old brother. She also gets lessons from her brother who likes to teach about astronomy, paleontology, other science topics and chess. Tiara likes what most 4-year-old like; she loves to watch TV, uses the family laptop for learning and playing and plays with her brother and pet cat.

She is also gifted artistically and athletically. Tiara started playing piano at the age of 3. “Parenting these days is a challenge, it becomes more so, when you have 2 highly gifted children who are active and keeps you going non-stop” says mom, Taji. For now, she has put her veterinary profession on-hold and focusing on their two young children, teaching 1st grade to college level courses, driving around town and out-of-town for their interests in activities like soccer, swimming, gymnastics, painting, piano and singing. Tiara has picked up several songs that her brother learned at the San Francisco Boys Chorus, where she sits quietly for 1-hour classes while her mom volunteers as a parent monitor. She loves to sing and whistles tunes to her favorite songs.

An inherent trait in highly gifted children is to keep their bodies and mind busy, this can pose a challenge for a single income family keeping up with the expenses needed for educational enrichment and extracurricular activities. Educational enrichment such as getting additional books, study materials, enrolling in on-line and college classes adds up to the expenses but for both parents it is their priority to help their little geniuses succeed. For the last couple of years, the Abrahams have been looking for scholarships for such very young gifted children, so far they are at a dead end. Most scholarships for gifted children are catered for middle and high school students which is unfortunate for budding child geniuses like Tanishq and Tiara. Most often people misunderstand such parents as being pushy parents, but the Abrahams say they are parents of “pushy kids ". Tiara and Tanishq's dad, Bijou said " We want to encourage and support their interests, we do not want to hold them back ". He tries to balance his time with their two highly gifted and talented children and a busy work schedule in the world of software programming. In spite of the challenges of raising two child geniuses, both dad & mom agrees, “We are thankful to have two wonderful kids, our wish is they grow up to be good citizens ”.