Oh man, this is my time to shine.

I grew up a "child prodigy." I first skipped grades right after Kindergarten. Even when I was seven, my parents, my teachers, and my extended family were praising just how brilliant and remarkable I was.

I mostly coasted through school, because the material was never really challenging to me, and I was a genius right? I can't recall being given any challenging projects and I never asked for anything extra because what did I have to prove? I also never asked my parents for help from middle school and beyond because they honestly weren't that smart and couldn't remember a lot of what they had learned in school.

As the age gap between my classmates and I grew, any chance at social development I had ground to a halt. My existing social issues were magnified by the fact that I was still a kid surrounded by adolescents and later adults all the time. I had nothing in common with any of my classmates, as they were in completely different places in life. My parents didn't send me to sports or other activities where I might have eventually made friends, because I "wasn't a physical kid," and "liked books."

Then college hit like a train. I got into a very good university. Suddenly, all of my classmates were as smart as or smarter than me. They all had way more life experience. They started forming their own social circles that I (barely a teenager) had no part in. My classes were, for the first time in my life, very challenging. A couple of my professors weren't subtle with expressing their disapproval that someone my age was there. I watched one of the handful of fellow students closer in age to me completely burn out within the first few months.

I ended up with very strong impostor syndrome. I'd never developed any real study skills or discipline about doing research and assignments. I never developed the ability to keep working on things that were difficult to me and come up with solutions. I never learned how to ask others for help. While everyone around me was still harping on about what a little genius I was going to college, I was terrified that they were going to discover my secret. If it was hard, I obviously wasn't meant to be there. If I couldn't do something, it must be because I'd fooled people about being so smart all along. If I let other people know that I was struggling, they'd see me for the great big fraud that I was and would probably throw me out.

It got so bad that for a while I wouldn't turn in assignments that I didn't think were any good, because I thought it would be better if people thought I was just lazy, but not stupid.

It got a lot better after a few years. I started catching up developmentally with my school peers, and the age gap mattered less than it previously had. I found people who knew what I felt and that I wasn't a "fraud." I learned how to actually apply myself to things.

But I'm never going to get the dozen or so years of my life I spent having my thoughts twisted into the mold that other people wanted me to be back. I'm never going to have had a normal or healthy childhood. I still, to this day, struggle with impostor syndrome. My social skills are something I still have to work a lot on.

If my children also turn out to be smart (or not), I will first and foremost praise their hard work and their creativity and their commitment to following through on things. Sure, I will praise them for being intelligent and for getting things right. But I will not fall into the trap that being intelligent simply means everything coming easy to you. I'll also be very wary before allowing them to skip any grades, and especially before allowing them to skip several. Some things can wait.