What is it like to raise a child with an IQ of 140? Just ask the parents of 5-year-old Nikolas, Mr. Manolis Makrymanolakis, and Mr. Roza Polytarchou. At only 5 Nikolas knows how to speak and write English, knows anatomy, and dreams of becoming a doctor for astronauts at NASA!

What he asked his parents to do in the summer was to get enrolled in an English language school. Thus, Nikolas Makrymanolakis, from Heraklion, is the youngest student in his class. But he already, from the age of 3, knows how to read and write.

These are some of the things Nikolas, who leads a normal life and, wants to do.

“When I grow up I want to be an astronaut and build rockets. But I would also like to work at NASA as a doctor for astronauts.”

The Kindergarten student from Heraklion already knows how to read. However, he has a particular weakness for fairy tales. He likes to study books on anatomy, astronomy, and geography. He was only 3 years old when he read his first book.

His father, Manolis Makrymanolakis, states that already 6 months old Nikolas had shown that he is ahead of his age. For a long time, his parents thought what he was doing was normal for kids his age.

At two years old, the little genius started spelling his first words after listening to them on a magnetic letter board in both Greek and English. Already, his kindergarten teachers have placed him with older children at school.

His parents say they were lucky as Nicholas had good teachers by his side from the beginning until today who recognised his potential and did not hold him back.

His kindergarten teacher, when Nicholas was 4 years old, distinguished he was ‘special’ and his cognitive level as the little one already knew what was taught in the school and advised his parents to visit a developmental specialist for evaluation, as they did.

As they told his parents, little Nicholas has an insatiable thirst for learning, but he needs not to lose his childhood, due to the excessive logic that was observed. Due to the fact that his IQ is combined with characteristics such as empathy, sociability, and imagination, it was not necessary to give additional instructions for the management of Nicholas.

His father states that “the line we are adopting is to behave normally and to understand that the knowledge and perception he has is normal and not something he should be proud of and show off to those he associates with as all children have other gifts, in sports, painting, etc. In general, we give him the opportunity, through discussion and dialogue to make his own choices and to be judged based on his age; we push him to learn what he wants regardless of what he wants to learn or do is for younger or older children; we do not pressure him and in no case do we try in our own way to influence his judgment with what he will follow. The English tutoring, for example, is his own wish, without us pressuring him to get top marks or get his proficiency certificate at 12”.

His mother, Roza Polytarchou, states that when Nicholas was 1.5 years old, with his pacifier, he would sit in front of the magnetic board and say the Greek and English alphabets while he also knew how to count.

“Nicholas showed that he had an attraction to letters from a young age, he is observant, he has a photographic memory,” she says.

“At the moment there is no flag of a country that does not know, he is good at spelling in both languages, he knows in detail our solar system and the anatomy of the human body. The next goal at the moment is to learn other foreign languages. He takes his mother’s cell phone in his hands and downloads applications with planet simulation and anagramming in English!

As both his parents say, going abroad will always be an option as the only opportunities catering for children with similar abilities can only be found there.

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