[Mezzie]

You shouldn't do this to prodigies either.

I was one and honestly I'm really happy my parents were neglectful (in the legal sense); my peers at award dinners might have had their university and career plans set out by 12, but none of them struck me as happy or emotionally healthy people, and the older I get the more I'm thinking that turning our smartest kids into robots or sociopaths is a bad idea.

[alexk307]

Just curious, what were you a prodigy at?

[Mezzie]

I was a hyperlexic kid + a mental calculator who was a child programmer.

At the age of 6, I was reading at the level of a college graduate, and I started coding in elementary school; I taught my first intro to programming class when I was 11.

My middle-school standardized test scores put me in the top .03 percent and my IQ was tested to be in the mid-140s.

So I think I would count by most metrics, barely. (Nothing quite like going to dinners for the top 200 whatever and knowing you're number 199 or so ha).

I'm also a mental basketcase who developed MS in my 20s, so while I've done pretty well for myself so far, I don't have the personality, dedication, or temperament for great success. There are just a lot of things from my childhood that really make me raise an eyebrow now as an adult.

The amount of pressure is terrible, of course, but in addition to that, there's this weird push and pull where a lot of adults will say out of one side of their mouth how special you are and hold you to standards that are unreasonable for children and accept you + your contributions if they're helpful, but the minute you have your own opinion or disagree, you're a child and obviously don't know anything.

I'm a lost cause for society, intellectually speaking, but I feel concerned for the me born in 2015.