We all know the “gifted kid” burnout pipeline. It starts with being reading level Z in the first grade and ends with an anxiety disorder and an identity crisis at twenty-five. Usually, parents of prodigies try to balance their child’s brilliance with, you know, an actual childhood. But one set of parents on Reddit seems determined to speed-run their daughter’s adolescence straight into the ground for the sake of a free degree and some headlines.
Our narrator is the father of a 13-year-old girl who is, by all accounts, an academic weapon. She is already in grade 10, meaning she has skipped two grades. She is maintaining a 99 average, which is the kind of grade point average that makes the rest of us mere mortals look like we were sleeping in class. She is clearly brilliant, capable, and driven.
Because she is such a superstar, a local university took notice after a science fair. They offered her a deal: start college courses online now, part-time, and potentially go full-time soon. The goal? Graduate high school at 15 and finish her university degree by 16 or 17. It is the Doogie Howser dream.
The university is sweetening the pot with free tuition and a stipend for books. Financially, it is a no-brainer. Skipping thousands of dollars in debt is the American Dream. But there is a catch, and that catch is that the student is a literal middle-school-aged child who just wants to breathe.
The daughter isn’t saying she never wants to go to college. In fact, her plan sounds incredibly mature and well-adjusted. She wants to finish high school, take a gap year to work—probably to experience the real world outside of an academic pressure cooker—and then go to college. She wants to be a teenager. She wants to have friends her own age, go to prom, and maybe work a terrible retail job just for the character development.
But her parents aren’t hearing that. They are hearing “free money” and “prestige.” The dad admits, with chilling honesty, that the college’s motivation is “free publicity for having a (very) minor student.” He acknowledges that “the allure is in her age being so young.”
Let’s translate that: The college wants to use your 13-year-old daughter as a marketing gimmick, a circus sideshow to draw in applicants, and you are mad that she doesn’t want to be the main attraction. You are prioritizing a press release over her mental health.
He claims he wants to “force” the decision—by which he means “push hard”—because it is a “once in a lifetime opportunity.” He argues that having a degree at 16 gets your foot in the door for lucrative jobs. Sure, it does. It also isolates you socially, forces you into the workforce before you can legally vote, and deprives you of the formative years where you learn how to be a human being, not just a brain in a jar.
The dad ends by saying he would have done anything for this opportunity. And there it is. The projection. He is looking at his daughter and seeing a second chance at his own life, completely ignoring the fact that she is a separate person with her own desires. She doesn’t want to be a 16-year-old corporate drone. She wants to be a kid.
So, WIBTA? Yes. You would be the absolute ahole. “Pushing hard” when a 13-year-old has already articulated a sensible, healthy life plan is not parenting; it is bullying. Let her finish high school. Let her work at the gap. The university will still be there when she is 18, but her childhood won’t be.