(Photo left of 6-Year-old genius Declan Lopez.)
In 1975 my wife and I welcomed a baby boy into our lives. As young proud parents we thought everything he did was amazing.As the months flew by every bit of progress - from crawling, walking, and talking - convinced us that we had a child genius.
In the following years we had two more boys who we were sure were going to challenge Einstein's intellect with every clever thing they did.
When it finally became apparent we weren't raising a crop of Mensa society candidates we gracefully accepted the fact that they were just normal and bright children who would never have inventions named after them.
I sometimes wonder what I'd have done if they were geniuses. I can only imagine some of the challenges that would have come up.
I read a story the other day about a 6-year-old New Jersey girl who has a 138 IQ. To put that in perspective, the highest average score for people under 64 years of age is 109.
Her name is Declan Lopez and she's a bubbly kindergartener who just happens to be interested in arts, science, math, geography, and reads at a fourth-grade level.
She was recently integrated into the Mensa society, the oldest-IQ society in the world. Her parents started noticing her intelligence when she was just 18 months old.
"We were on a trip in the airport, and she just started to count in Mandarin," the proud mom told WPVI-TV.
If my kid had started to speak Mandarin at 18 months old, I wouldn't have even known it. More than likely, I would have written it off as baby goblygook.
There's no distinct answer to has the highest IQ, but it is not Albert Einstein.
Those with higher IQs outside of Einstein include William James Sidis, (who was estimated to have anywhere between a 200 to 300 IQ); Leonardo Da Vinci (estimated to have IQ scores ranging from 180 to 220) and Marilyn vos Savant (who has the highest recorded IQ, with score of 228 according to The Guiness Book of World Records" in 1985.
Turning back to little Declan for a moment, who by all accounts is a normal kid (with the exception of her smarts), I think about the mischief she could get into.
I remember when my three little non-geniuses got into trouble, and I think what a challenge it must be if you have a kid smarter than you.
As it stands, being a non-genius, my boys never had a chance to graduate college at 11 years old like Adragon De Mello (projected IQ of 400) who graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz according to Reader's Digest.