Nathan Katcher memorized the design of the flags of 65 different countries. He taught himself how to play the piano using an app. He has five different versions of Monopoly and knows exactly how much each property costs.
And for fun, six-year-old Nathan solves complex equations in his head.
Nathan, or "Nathan the Number Kid" as he's known on TikTok, is a "firecracker," says his mom, Rachel Katcher. "He has red hair and the personality that goes along with it."
One of Nathan's videos — showing him successfully calculating a lengthy equation that includes multiplication, addition, subtraction, division and even square root — gained 40,000 views practically overnight.
Rachel and her husband Micah, math lovers themselves, dream up these math problems to challenge Nathan while on the go. Whether he's lounging at his home in Chesterfield, Missouri, dining at Chick-fil-A or waiting for bed in adorable shark pajamas, Nathan solves equations without breaking a sweat.
"You can see his eyes moving as he's following along and visualizing the numbers," Rachel says. "He 'outmaths' most grownups he talks to."
From counting to computation
Before she became a mother, Rachel was a fifth grade teacher, and she "put that teacher hat back on when we were locked down during the pandemic," she tells TODAY.com.
Faced with long days stuck inside, Rachel took on educational duties for Nathan and his older brother Evan, now 9. Even though the boys are several years apart, Rachel taught them all the same material to make things a bit easier on everyone.
Then when schools slowly started reopening, the Katchers would take "long car rides to nowhere," and Rachel noticed that Nathan, who was three and a half at the time, had started counting school buses that they passed. Instead of starting over each time he got in the car, Nathan would start from his previous total. "It blew my mind" when he counted his way into the 300s, Rachel said.
Shortly after, Nathan learned to add and he could "really understand" how numbers worked together.
The 'Nathan effect'
In addition to adding numbers in his head, Nathan liked writing them down.
While in kindergarten, he began writing numbers down on a long scroll of paper, ultimately writing digits from 1 to 10,000. Proud of himself, Nathan brought the scroll to school with him, impressing his classmates with his dedication.
"There is this Nathan Effect where the class saw him as the math leader," Rachael says. And as a result, his classmates started their own number scrolls. The trend became so popular that the teacher had to ask the kids to stop bringing their scrolls into school.
"The classroom would just be covered with paper, you know. Everyone had their scroll and they would roll out," she says. "The teacher sends us an email that says, 'I love this but we've got to stop because I can't even walk in the classroom.'"
Gaining focus
Together with his family, Nathan practices his mental math every day.
"It focuses him and it gives him an opportunity to have positive reinforcement. It feels good. It's something the whole family does together. We have fun with it," says Rachel.
Now that he's a big first grader, Nathan has set his sights on what he considers to be the pinnacle of the math mountain: calculus. "Well that's when you surpass us," Rachel jokes with him.
Although his mom has told him the different ways math could be a part of his future career, she says that Nathan is still "a normal six-year-old boy that wants to do a different thing every day."
But whether Nathan eventually becomes a baseball player, a singer or a co-host of his brother's YouTube channel, he'll always have math as a part of his life.
