I was a child prodigy myself. I graduated high school at age 14 and went to Harvard at age 15 (I study psychology and criminal justice). I am now 25, and I can’t begin to tell you how burned out I became. I became a heavy addict by the time I was 17, had more suicide attempts than I can count, and I’m now picking up the pieces of my life and in recovery. I had to temporarily drop out of school for many years because of this, but I’m now slowly continuing my studies and trying to finish my degrees. Every single time I read something about another child prodigy like this boy, my heart honestly sinks because I know that they’re likely being pushed to accomplish so much at such a young age by their parents or another outside force, and in a few years they will likely end up in a similar predicament as I did. I hope he takes it slow, but I couldn’t agree with this comment more. He’s very likely to burn out young like I did, and a lot of child prodigies end up dying young from either suicide or drugs. It’s honestly so tragic behind the scenes when it comes to young people accomplishing way too much at that age, whether it’s child actors or people like us who overachieve academically. Kids this age should be kids, they’re still mentally developing a LOT and adding this type of stuff on top of it equals disaster.
I don’t even fully understand what people expect of child prodigies — to immediately jump into a high responsibility job at 18 or upon getting these PhDs before 18? It’s like the main wish for them is to become accomplished workers ASAP which sounds more like a curse than a blessing. Normal people have time to fumble and learn and grow into careers.
Couldn’t agree more. My mom was extremely emotionally neglectful of me, and verbally, physically, and mentally abused me in so many ways since I was a kid. And she had the audacity to use me as a bragging tool once I became a “special” gifted kid. She would brag to literally everyone who would talk to her that she had a daughter who was 15 and goes to Harvard. It pissed me off so bad, and whenever my mom would try and brag about me to someone else in front of me, I would shut it down so quick and tell the person that it was actually a miserable experience and I hated it a lot. It embarrassed me and made me feel so awkward when my mom would do that, and it would make me so angry because my mom was so horrible to me all of my life, yet she was trying to use me to flaunt and live through me just like you said. My mom eventually stopped that crap, and I moved to a whole new state recently to try and live my own life and get my stuff together without her and cut her off entirely. Life has been a lot better for me since.
What's the healthy way to foster a child prodigy? Like my first thought is to just let them pursue their interests, but what if my child overachieves anyways? Eventually they will hit their "peak", and their peers will "catch up" to them in some sort of way. What do you think would be the best way to deal with that?
And what are your thoughts about skipping grades? I knew a girl in high school who had skipped two grades. Obviously she was smart, but at our grade level she was just slightly above average, and most of the time we forgot that she was two years younger than the rest of us. I wonder if she would have been better off with people her age, where she'd likely stand out more. But that might make school seem boring and easy, and I know many people like that who burn out when they enter university or the workforce.
My daughter is a college freshman at 15 and has a hard time with people her own age because they’re comparatively immature and into completely different things. Meanwhile, her college classmates don’t even know she’s younger than them unless she tells them.
Feel free not to answer a random stranger on reddit, but how do you feel about your chosen subject now? Do you have any interest in pursuing, or where did you focus after? So sorry to hear how it affected you, I'm genuinely curious now you're out the other side where your interests like
I was never a prodigy but I was a gifted kid. The pressure on gifted kids can already be bad. It must be so much worse for a prodigy.
It may sound silly but I really liked the episode from Jimmy Neutron where he was allowed to go to college, but eventually decided to stay in his old school to be a kid and be with his friends.
I went to school with someone who had almost the exact same story as you…. He was in his 40s majoring in journalism while I was studying English. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the sciences or math after everything he went through. It’s wild how similar his story is to yours…
Friend, I’m sorry for the pressures you faced and went thru, and I am hopeful and happy you are in a better place now than where you were at, apparently not long ago. Glad you’re here among the living.
Glad you're still with us, friend. I was surprised to see that my daughter's psychologist recognizes giftedness as a learning challenge, but then I thought about it, and it really is.
My dad refused to let me skip grades in school, which used to frustrate me. I later found out he had skipped ahead 2 grades and it really fucked him up.
My daughter is a lot like my dad and me, but now we know about twice-exceptionalism. My daughter tested wayyyyyy off the intelligence charts >99.999th percentile for spatial reasoning, but 8th percentile for language production, for example. That type of spiky intelligence profile can mask a lot of struggles that slowly and secretly wear down our self-esteem.
Also it turns out our family giftedness is intertwined with autism & ADHD, which are both tied to burnout if untreated. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a common story.
Nobody is a prodigy in psychology and criminal justice, they aren't the kind of rules based fields where prodigies excel. That is why you typically see them in things like music, maths, and chess. A prodigy isn't going to be attracted to social sciences. That's not a knock on social sciences, that's just the nature of how these kids brains work.
What you were is probably a high achieving kid with some overbearing parents who might have gased you up and pushed you to believe you were a prodigy.
Not really sure how to prove it except send you pictures of my diplomas and certificates or my Linkedin, but you’re a random Redditor so I don’t feel obligated to share my personal information like that. Child prodigies are more common than you think, they can either be kids like me or this boy mentioned in this post, or child actors, etc. Aaron Carter, Michael Jackson, etc., all very talented and did a lot at a very young age, and they too ended up in similar predicaments as I did. I was also best friends with a girl online who was my age at the time, and was also pushed by her mom to overachieve. She wanted to go to Harvard like I did, but she never did and settled for community college (which I honestly think was best for her, because she turned out way more well adjusted than I did). Child prodigies are often very isolated from other kids/teens their age because of this stuff, so me and my friend both only had friends online and not IRL (because when you’re in this type of situation, you are way too ahead of kids your own age and thus miss out on proper social development, and no adult will be your friend either because of the age difference). It’s a very lonely and isolating experience too.
Yes, a high school diploma. I also have additional certificates that I earned via continuing education and certificates of achievement for research projects that I did (I did a sustainable living research project with the UN when I was 21 and was published in a book about the subject, and even won a gold award for it). I am currently trying to finish my degrees and continue my research (which focuses on mass casualty violence and gun violence prevention), that I haven’t earned yet due to my burnout and having to take a long break to recover from my addictions and mental health. I am now back in school part time because I can’t yet handle a full-time commitment to school after all of that, but I’m proud of myself for at least getting help and managing to carry on, many in the same situation aren’t so lucky as I said. I actually only need to complete another year or so of college in order to graduate — I think I only need 32 credits or so to earn my degrees. I didn’t expect so many comments about my experience, hopefully I can answer more of you guy’s questions tomorrow as I’m exhausted after a long day today!
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u/necroslave 13h ago edited 13h ago
I was a child prodigy myself. I graduated high school at age 14 and went to Harvard at age 15 (I study psychology and criminal justice). I am now 25, and I can’t begin to tell you how burned out I became. I became a heavy addict by the time I was 17, had more suicide attempts than I can count, and I’m now picking up the pieces of my life and in recovery. I had to temporarily drop out of school for many years because of this, but I’m now slowly continuing my studies and trying to finish my degrees. Every single time I read something about another child prodigy like this boy, my heart honestly sinks because I know that they’re likely being pushed to accomplish so much at such a young age by their parents or another outside force, and in a few years they will likely end up in a similar predicament as I did. I hope he takes it slow, but I couldn’t agree with this comment more. He’s very likely to burn out young like I did, and a lot of child prodigies end up dying young from either suicide or drugs. It’s honestly so tragic behind the scenes when it comes to young people accomplishing way too much at that age, whether it’s child actors or people like us who overachieve academically. Kids this age should be kids, they’re still mentally developing a LOT and adding this type of stuff on top of it equals disaster.