Algebra can be bewildering to many children, but the first time Graydon Flatt’s mother showed him an algebraic equation, he understood in no time.He was five years old.He is now 13 and in Year 9 at Warwick Academy.Graydon has won the annual Center for Talented Youth(CTY) Math Olympiad two years in a row. CTY is a programme for gifted students started by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.And this month he took the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) maths exam three years earlier than most students.“Some of the questions were hard, but some of them were easy,” he said shortly after taking the international exam. “One or two of them were really difficult.”It is pretty clear that he loves maths and its challenges.“It is fun to solve problems,” he said. “Sometimes it can be really frustrating when you can’t figure it out and you try all these methods and it clicks in and you figure it out and it is like ‘yes!’. You feel really good, especially when you think that you got it right.”But he also loves science and hopes to maybe be a chemist or a physicist one day. He admitted having a few simple chemicals and test tubes at home.“For fun, I play violin and do other activities, just regular fun things that kids do,” said Graydon. “I do average stuff. There are a couple of other kids in my class who like math or science as much as I do. Lots of people think that I just go home and do math and stuff, but I do have a life. I like to play tennis, badminton, and ping pong. I also love playing the violin.”His parents, Eileen Kilgour and Gordon Flatt, are both chartered accountants and one of his grandfathers was an engineer.“Maybe it runs in the family,” said Ms Kilgour. “Graydon was also good at spelling. He could spell his own name at the age of one and the names of other family members. He started reading at three years old and was reading chapter books by four. In primary one, when children normally start learning to read, Graydon was assessed and found to be reading at a primary five level. He was moved up a grade at the end of primary one.”Ms Kilgour said the problem with raising a smart child is that they rarely forget anything you say, and if you are going to tell a story it is important that you get it factually correct.“He has an amazing memory. He is always correcting me and, now that he is older, contradicting me. He is always saying ‘no mom, that is not what happened’. It has actually been very easy to be his mother, because he gets things very quickly. I will show him something once and he will get it. I never had to sit there for hours and hours trying to teach him something. I showed him some books and he learned reading. We are very proud of him, obviously. He is our only child.”Ms Kilgour said when Graydon was six years old, her only concern about moving him up a grade was that he might suffer socially with children a year older than himself.“I was told he would be with a great group of kids, and I was told there would be some other little kids who were similar to him and bright,” said Ms Kilgour. “And he did get into a really nice group of kids, and it all worked out. I don’t regret it at all.”One thing that has helped him stay mentally challenged is his participation in the CTY programme. He has taken classes with them for several years this year he did a calculus course.“In my class at CTY this year there is one guy in my grade who is one year older,” he said. “The other people are 14, 15, 16, slightly older. It is sort of difficult to be in a class with older people, but after awhile you get used to it.”It is through CTY that he has taken part in the annual Math Olympiad for the past five years.“Up until this year I did the grade that I am in, which is a year older than me,” he said. “This year I did the one above that, meant for students two years older than me. It was not too bad. It was harder than the previous one I took that was at my grade level. I felt a bit stressed but after awhile I just got into the hang of it.”He said the Math Olympiad was designed in such a way that it was difficult to study for it, because there are many different types of maths questions to solve. “I did a bit of past review and then I knew most of the topics from last year,” he said. “I tried to apply them this year. It is pretty hard to prepare although you can do practice questions. I think CTY had a time you could go in a couple weeks before that you could practice. I didn’t go to that. It is not really curriculum-based, it is more like problems. ”His mother was a little uncertain as to whether Graydon would graduate and go straight to university, where he would potentially be younger than most other students, or perhaps take a gap year.“We don’t know if he will be ready, emotionally, for college,” she said. Graydon interjected: “Define emotionally.”“Socially,” said his mother.“Oh, you mean being with all the old people,” said Graydon.Ms Kilgour said she was worried about what would happen when a younger student was exposed to the less academic side of college life, such as college drinking.Graydon did not share her concerns. “I would like to thank Ace for sponsoring the Math Olympiad,” said Graydon. “I would also like to thank CTY especially Riquette Bonne-Smith, executive director for giving me the opportunity and the University of Waterloo because they helped grade the questions. They sent down a professor of math from there, called Dr Barry Ferguson. He came down and picked the winning math papers.”