Is your child smart enough to be President?

For most people, answering that question may not be as easy and knee-jerk as it may seem. How smart do you have to be to be President of the United States? And how exactly do you figure out how “smart” someone is?

The standard for determining how smart someone is, is generally based on his or her “intelligence quotient” or IQ. An IQ is a score derived from standardized tests that attempt to measure mental ability. By definition, the average IQ score is 100. Among people in the United states:

·       50% have an IQ of 90-109

·       2.2% have IQs of 130 or higher

·       2.2% have IQs of 69 or lower

·       Above 140 is considered “genius” in the traditional ranking system

Since the term “IQ” wasn’t coined until 1912, it’s impossible to determine the IQs of America’s presidents before that time, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. Determining the IQs of presidents since that time often takes a lot of work too, as most never took simple IQ tests or aren’t willing to release the results. So, after studying papers, habits, tests and accomplishments, the so-called IQ experts generally estimate and label our Presidents with these “smarts.”

·       John Quincy Adams 175

·       George W. Bush 125

·       Bill Clinton 137

·       Abraham Lincoln 148

·       Richard Nixon 143

Of the Whitehouse wannabes, only John McCain has a public record of his IQ. It’s 133 based on a college IQ score that was released in a batch of military records in 1984 and published in Time magazine. No public record of Barack Obama’s IQ is available, but it’s estimated at anywhere between 116 and 172, with the number most likely falling between 130 and 148.

If you’re not sure your child stacks up, there are things you can do to boost their IQ score. “Any person can get smarter, can become better thinkers, can develop a better brain,"says Dr. Ken Gibson, author of Unlock the Einstein Inside: Applying New Brain Science to Wake Up the Smart in Your Child. “The key is not more academic knowledge. It’s strengthening the underlying skills that make up IQ - skills like attention, memory, processing speed, visual and auditory processing, and logic and reasoning.”

Dr. Gibson warns people not to get too caught up in IQ scores, because the IQ number is simply an average of all the underlying cognitive skills. “It’s possible for a child to have a learning problem and a high IQ score,” says Gibson. “For example, a child who has ADHD may have a severe deficiency in the mental skills of attention, and be well above average in other cognitive abilities. When you lump it all together and average it out, it’ll look like there’s no problem because the IQ score is average. In fact that score is masking what could be a serious problem.”

Brain-training company LearningRx specializes in correcting cognitive skill deficiencies and now has over 80 centers in 28 states. According to LearningRx Vice President of Research and Development Tanya Mitchell, more than 20,000 people have gone through the LearningRx program with graduates now seeing an average gain of 4.12 years across nine cognitive areas. “We are literally making people smarter,” says Mitchell. “Testing proves it, but it’s the real-life results that are so exciting. After our training, parents report their kids get better grades, get their homework done faster and more independently, pay attention better, are better learners, and are generally more confident.”

And there are other benefits to better cognitive skills. People with IQs of 120 and above tend to fill the professions of doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, and college professors – any of which might be a nice fall-back career if your child’s not convinced she actually wants to be President.