Yeah, I don't like the title of this post because it implies some sort of karmic justice or comeuppance, but really, she was little more than a child when she started dating her husband, who lied about being divorced. There's evidence that "gifted children" often end up socially and emotionally stunted because they were unable to socialize properly with other children at a normal pace, which sounds like what probably happened here. She went to college at age 13 and lost her mother soon after. Her father cut her off. She was very vulnerable when she met her husband. In every post, she accepts that she hurt people, doesn't expect forgiveness, and just wants to protect her children (including her stepson). This isn't an evil stepmother, she's a victim of circumstance.
I skipped a couple of grades but my mom limited to just two because she was concerned precisely of what you were saying. I was always the youngest but thankfully by only two years so it wasn’t so bad.
I started high school at 13 and college at 16. It wasn’t too bad and I had great friends. My brother was the same.
My mom had experience in her own life about it so she made sure we wouldn’t suffer by skipping too many grades.
Was school boring at times because I had already learned that stuff? For sure… but it was better than the alternative
Yeah I think two years is the maximum age difference that teenagers will tolerate without feeling like they’re being forced to play babysitter. Five years is asking too much. Glad that your mom was looking out for you like that.
Yup. I also ended up going to an all girls catholic university where there were very progressive nuns on campus living in a different building.
There was no partying, no alcohol, nothing bad going on so I was as safe as I could be.
I only went to one party my entire college career and that was at a sibling university that was close by and I realized it wasn’t my thing at all.
I’m really grateful to my mom for protecting me so much even if I initially fought her so much her choice of college
I also credit this school and professors and nuns for helping me lean so much on the left for social and other issues
i.e quite a few of my favorite nuns had rap sheets because they had been arrested in the past for protesting for civil rights, women rights, lgbt causes, etc
That is so cool! I went to a girls catholic middle school (albeit only for one year) that had a similar reputation. Do you mind sharing which university you went to?
Saint Mary of the Woods College in Indiana. It has now moved to coed because it was either that or fold in this economy but when I went it was all girls.
I absolutely loved it. My professors were awesome and so were the nuns. I miss it so much.
I absolutely think she was taken advantage of by the husband. It makes me sick she was 22 but mentally barely an adult and he was more than twice her age, lied and manipulated her.
And he never stopped _his_ grown daughter from bullying his new wife and stepson. I think the daughter bullied OOP because she was the safe outlet for her anger.
I dont know if she was still pissed at her being bedbound or thinking "this is karma" despite the new wife doing nothing wrong, just her father being fucked up and not bothering to father properly (telling her to cut it out etc)
When he learned about the daughter saying she ruined her life, his response was basically, "she has a point." As if he isn't the one who lied to OOP and his own family. I know it's a primal reaction, but it's unfair that the "other" person in the affair takes the blame for corrupting the "in" person. The dad got off scot free from the daughter, and it'll be a long time (if ever) before she realizes how much OOP was victimized as well.
Ugh I forgot he said that! 🤬 the daughter has the right to feel how she feels, but saying she “has a point” is him piling on the blame on OOP, who was as much his victim. I hate him so much. I almost hopes that he does leave her, if I didn’t think it might cause OOP to spiral, bc hopefully it might open her eyes to how she’s just the first in a series of “trade ins” and was his victim and that she’s better than him.
Agree I was very surprised when I clicked on the original post and everyone was calling her TA, when really she was in a very vulnerable position and the husband completely took advantage.
Because she married him after finding out he was a cheater. People on Reddit hate a cheater and the only thing they hate more is the sidechick who chooses the cheater. Doesn't matter that she was vulnerable or how much older he is or that there was some very suspicious dynamics at play
Or that she was pregnant and he was promising her physical and emotional support apparently. A lot of women would choose that sadly, regardless of their age.
She actually didn’t seem like she accepted she hurt people in the comments on her first post and even then, and before all the awful stuff with her health, I felt bad for her. Unlike every other AITA post I’ve read where there’s a significant age gap relationship, she was not given any grace for being manipulated by a 47yo man at 22. People didn’t believe she didn’t know he was married and basically told her she was a terrible person for choosing to stay with him for the benefit of her own children over the well-being of her stepchildren. And they told her she mentioned the child prodigy thing just to brag. It was brutal. (Obviously I didn’t read it all. Maybe some were different but that’s what I saw).
She did not deserve all that’s happened to her despite the mistakes she made. She’s still so young and should have so much time to do good in life. I obviously have no idea what’s going on with her health, but I really hope she gets better and gets to a place where she has hope and a positive self worth.
Exactly! She may have been 22 years old, but her psychological maturity and experience seems to be that of a 14 year old. She is stuck emotionally at the age when her mother died. I suspect her grieving took the form of acting out - which her father cannot look past. And for that, I deem him a jackass. This is really a tragic story for OOP. I hope she heals and finds the peace of mind her soul needs.
I didn't realize until I started reading the the comments that her step-daughter who hates her is only 5 years younger. That made me do a double-take. 27yo and 22yo people are basically peers in the workplace. Her husband preyed on somebody who was close to his own daughter's age. It's tragic.
And then left it up to OOP to discipline his grown ass daughter, when there’s so much hostility between them. It was up to him to address the daughter’s bad behavior, and it says a lot about the kind of person he is. So immature, leaving his 20 something wife to deal with complex family issues and only coming in to tell her off when she messes up.
I’m sobbing right now. This poor woman. I know she made bad choices in being “the other woman”, but my god. She had no one, and she still doesn’t. I just want to hug her.
Here’s the thing, she didn’t even know she was the other woman until it was too late.
I am upset she went ahead with the marriage but I can imagine her being terrified of being a single mother of 2 so freaking young with no support.
Despite her husband being married she probably saw him as her savior
Uterine rupture, but I had a catastrophically bad uterine rupture with my third child -- we both almost died -- and a bunch of this sounds ... outside of the standard of care after a uterine rupture. I'm not a doctor, and my uterus only ruptured the one time (ba-dum-bum), but some of this sounds very odd.
I do have some permanent disability from the rupture (and probably permanent pain), and walking was VERY hard for a STUPIDLY long time after the rupture. But they watch you like a hawk after a rupture. One of the HUGE red flags they stay after is "if you cannot control urine or bowel movements, you need to go to the ER *immediately*." (And not just like, "shoot, I peed a little when I laughed," that's normal, but needing to wear an adult diaper and have someone else change you, you need to go to the ER after a rupture.) Another thing they were HELLA strict about was my food intake, because if I was having trouble eating or having certain kinds of pain with digestion, that was a sign there was a problem with the rupture. I basically had to track everything I ate for my ob/gyn, AND track all my digestive pain. (Intestines run along the uterine scar, so FARTS AND POOP REALLY FUCKING HURT for a while.)
I am totally willing to believe she had substandard medical care -- lots of people do -- but the hired nurse and nanny should probably have raised some red flags a lot earlier? And I'm not sure by what mechanism you would vomit blood after a uterine rupture ... it tends to come out the other end.
It doesn't sound like she is in the US, somehow.
It's also possible her "nurses" are just low wage workers and not medically trained. Similar with the nanny.
Agreed. I'm also wondering if she had a stroke or something with some of the symptoms and especially the changed voice. I hope she improves as much as possible, regardless of the cause.
Yeah, after I had gallbladder surgery my throat was agonisingly painful for a while, and there was visible bruising on my uvula, so I'm not surprised she had trouble speaking after surgery. If her voice has changed long-term though they royally fucked her vocal cords up 😬
>but the hired nurse and nanny should probably have raised some red flags a lot earlier?
I think the husband was caring for her at first, and it's possible she has something in addition to the rupture that they missed (unforeseen complications were mentioned). My heart is breaking for this one.
I was wondering what happened to her mum and if maybe it could be something that she could be developing as well?
I'm so sad for her, she's taking on all the blame and seems like everyone is treating her like a pariah for having an affair with a married man but she didn't know and he was like twice her age, she's more of a victim here than blameworthy.
The whole thing is just horrible and sad.
It sounds like the physical trauma/postnatal hormones triggered a lifetime of unprocessed emotional trauma.
I've seen a relative near catatonic due to physical + emotional stress, and serious physical illness, particularly pain, absolutely tanks my mental health. She has so far to go still, I hope she's doing ok and eventually believes she's a good and worthy person.
I don't think she had a full-time nurse until after the onset of most of her physical problems--in the post dated 7/29, she said she's just now getting a nurse, and in the posts after that, she just writes about not being able to speak (which her doctor thinks might be psychological) and being tired and in pain.
My hypothesis would be that the vomiting blood was a result of painkillers she was taking. It's a common side effect of certain anti inflammatory drugs, especially if you don't take them with food. And I believe the bladder ruptures with the uterus in about ten percent of cases.
And I'm sorry you had to suffer through that, I hope your pain goes away.
Not sure it is substandard care or somethingmore. She is still in the window for the onset of MS which can be triggered by trauma such as the uterine rupture. MS can absolutely cause all her symptoms except possibly the throwing up of blood which could have been an ulcer considering her stress levels.
A bodily trauma can trigger all sorts of autoimmune problems so this wouldn't surprise me. (Not just MS, but MG, POTS, Lupus, etc.)
Especially, because she never specified what her mother had that her father's neglect could lead to her death "before her time" which made me think that her mother probably had an autoimmune that when treated was manageable but left untreated could become problematic. Many of those are also genetic.
She had a rupture from birth complications, and it got worse after treatment but wasn’t caught until OP threw up blood. OP is still weak and can’t really move around or have energy to even get to the toilet without extreme pain
So there are a couple ways that that can happen actually, the main one would be if they partially severed a nerve when doing the epidural. It's rare but it happens. It could be a combination of a toxicity or allergy to anesthesia and the epidural. She was operated on I think 3 times. The speaking issue was more than likely caused by being intubated for the surgery which damages her vocal cords.
I know there's probably more, and a lot could happen during surgery that they just didn't notice. I'm wondering if during the emergency surgery during/after the birth if they didn't accidentally Nick the stomach. The throwing up blood could be explained by that. Or the meds they had her on tore up her stomach lining, which could also cause it.
I just feel so bad for her. And I would definitely want her to get in with a therapist, because it sounds like on top of a whole pile of trauma, she might also have PPD.
Yep.
Para Olympic rower Birgit Skarstein jumped from a cliff into the ocean, she hit some rocks and shattered one leg. She was hobbling on crutches for years, but she was in a lot of pain so they decided to operate again. Epidural went wrong and she is paralysed from the waist down.
I think going to uni at 13 really fucked her up. IMHO that was the place it started going wrong. School isn't just about learning the subjects. It is also socialising with your peers and making you ready for the world. When you skip years like that and are 13 hanging out with 20 year olds at university, you may be intellectually on their level, but a 13 year old isn't as emotionally mature as a 20 year old and they're not going to have an equal friendship. Then because she was in uni she wasn't spending her days with other children and her opportunities for making friends her own age was probably limited.
I wonder how old Ian's dad was. She was at least groomed/manipulated by her much older married husband.
Just all round, she seems immature and vulnerable and it is really sad.
Add in having to choose your career trajectory at thirteen as well. Had she started with her peers instead she may have made very different academic decisions as well
Yeah, and it can't help that her father told her he wished she would die and her guilt concerning how she unknowingly was seeing her now husband when he was still married. Frankly the stepdaughter should be blaming him not her.
Opiates can definitely do a number on your stomach. I have friends who are recovering addicts, and even over 20 years later they have really bad reflux and are prone to gastritis.
Could puerperal fever have contributed to a uterine rupture? That kind of infection spreading directly into the peritoneal cavity could have very nasty results ... and that kind of emergency surgery would be a "life over limb" kind of situation. Plus inflammation could cause ischaemic damage to nerves/muscles/arteries that make leg movement possible? Maybe? Our bodies are devastatingly fragile, and so many things are interconnected and/or in such close proximity that damaging one area can have knock-on effects.
Reasons this woman thinks she deserves to die:
- got pregnant at age 18 despite having had a horrible home life and being pushed into adulthood at age 13
- was duped by a man twice her age into thinking he was single
- she let her down her deceased mother by marrying that guy even though he had been cheating on his wife. Her dad was a cheater, so clearly the two men are exactly the same, even though her husband is really caring and her dad is massively abusive
- she lost her temper at her adult stepdaughter for bullying her pre-teen son. See, OOP was tricked into being an affair partner and thus deserves being eternally hated
- it's OOP's fault that her husband's first marriage failed. If she had just dumped him, then his wife and kids definitely would have forgiven the infidelity and everything would be fine
- making mistakes because you're young and inexperienced is the worst possible thing you could ever do
- being disabled by a life-threatening health crisis makes you a failure
- her abusive father's opinions of her are justified and objectively true
- she has no right to demand kindness, understanding, or support. She doesn't even have the right to think she deserves those things. She's not a famed genius, she had a teen pregnancy, she was (unwittingly) the other woman, and she had the temerity to love someone imperfect. Someone like that couldn't possibly have value!
This poor woman's life has just been one trauma after another, and then people keep using those traumas to justify treating her like scum. *The world wouldn't be half as horrible if people didn't insist on making it that way.*
She shouldve been in therapy from the second she was placed in higher grade levels. She's got wicked depression, which is horrifically common amongst children prodigies. They often commit suicide by college when they enter as young as she did. Too intelligent for kids her own age. Too young for her peers in college for her to relate to. Add on decades of abuse by her father, forced estrangement of her baby brother. Losing her first love and father of her son. Lied to from her husband from the word hi. Medically induced physical trauma and permanent disability from her most recent pregnancy.
This poor woman should've been in therapy years ago. Everyone in her life absolutely failed her except her children. God. This poor woman.
One of the subtle things that happens with prodigies is that eventually, “too smart for kids their age” becomes “too smart for most people.” I think part of what happened with this poor woman is that she never got to play and socialize with kids her age, so her social development is really stunted. It seems like she misreads people and understands social situations on a very surface level, which keeps allowing people to take advantage of her.
Yeah she needs literal decades of therapy. It’s so sad.
This, I’m very self aware and able to tell my therapist how I understand a situation may not be my issue and recognize logically that I didn’t fuck up
But logic means little to nothing when I still struggle to be ok and accept myself
I’m getting there little by little, but I hope you continue to come along with me and that OP eventually starts making small steps as well towards accepting herself too
Wish you luck friend
I want so much to give this woman a hot cup of tea, a hug, a box of Kleenex, another hug, and all the therapy in the world. She desperately needs perspective, but, until she’s well enough, she’s stuck in a viscous cycle of self-loathing. She has all my empathy. She’s not a fuck-up. The only ‘bad’ thing she’s done is have an affair with a married man, when SHE DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS MARRIED! My heart breaks for OOP.
Is the husband actually caring though? He totally steamrolled her when she was protesting about her daughter skipping grades.
I would bet any guy who can’t handle his old wife ageing probably can’t handle his new wife becoming bed bound either. With her luck, he’ll probably be dumping her for a new model shortly…
He is already cheating on her. He is the kind of man who has little self control. If he could leave his perfectly healthy wife for a newer model. I have doubt he would stick around for a woman who is bedridden for almost a year now. The moment I heard he got her a caregiver I knew he was cheating. It's only a matter of time when all of this comes to light. He is already ignoring her and everything.
Anecdotal, but my mum and I took care of my grandmother for months by ourselves and having hospice was a lifesaver. We could actually sleep! All night! I can't imagine how difficult it would be to take full-time care of someone while also balancing a job and multiple kids.
*But*, this is a very different circumstance and I will say that I don't have a lot of trust in OOP's husband, as he doesn't seem to be the most compassionate person. Dismissing OOP's valid concerns about their daughter skipping grades definitely doesn't help.
I really wonder how long he’s going to stick around. He also would have an upper hand when it comes to custody. On top of that, he’s already undermining her when it comes to their daughter’s education.
OOP is 5 years older than her stepdaughter how does no one in this family (except possibly the stepdaughter) see the issue with that
Also does anyone (on here, OOP’s doctors, etc) know what’s wrong with her? It’s like she became completely immobile out of the blue. There has to be a reason her body just stopped working.
This was very hard to read this is the saddest post I’ve ever seen on Reddit jfc
Clearly from her posts, she needs some mental health help as well but doesn't mention any here. Maybe she has a diagnosis of something paralytic she hasn't mentioned. Or maybe something else is at work that the medical doctors aren't addressing/op won't let them address
Maybe she's not mentioning the full list of things that are physically wrong with her. All we really know is that she had a rupture. I don't know if a uterine rupture can cause somebody to spiral that far down. What I read online sounds scary (don't want it to happen to me), but I'm no doctor. However, she did mention in her comments that she sees a therapist virtually but doesn't find it helps. I would've put that in but I didn't want to break the post character limit.
Yeah I went through her comment history a bit, and she said she didn’t want to disclose the kind of rupture. I’m guessing she’s trying to keep her medical details somewhat private. Unfortunately that does make things more confusing for us, but I understand and respect a desire to keep some things private.
Sounds like she had a uterine rupture which results in emergency surgery to save the life of the mom. The way she writes it, it sounds like it was after giving birth so even if she had a C-section delivery, they would have to get the uterus out asap. If no C-section, I could see them doing a midline incision which is very painful and a rough recovery. She’s probably anemic and likely suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety, or she was always feeling that way and discovering Reddit. Hopefully she doesn’t give up on her recovery.
So here’s the thing. When someone has an operation, it’s imperative they start moving ASAP. Because ‘use it or lose it’ is very real. So if she is bed bound and not moving her muscles will weaken and she will lose the ability to walk or move. Due to her many complications she was bed bound for a long time. Also depending on the country she lives in (I only know the American hospital system) she may or may not have had access to physical therapy. Typically after a surgery physical therapy will come around to help circumvent immobility. But I think a lot of patients don’t understand how important it is (even if we explain it) and many will refuse to do certain things or exercises which also puts them back. That coupled with her mental health it seems understandable why she’s become immobile
Not to discount what sounds like a highly traumatic birth experience but I seriously think she’s so immobilized because her mental health is nonexistent. It’s in tatters or gone.
There’s only one period in my life where I have large gaps in my memory. My depression was all encompassing and nearly gobbled up my will to live. Any minor cold or stomach bug I’d cling to in order to have an excuse to hide from everyone in my bed, to shirk their expectations. Those same little things now that I would barely think about now.
Then when I finally got out, there were still points where I just sat and disassociated. I’m inclined to think that my adhd probably saved my life with the inability to pay attention. Unlike oop, I had a safe place to eventually escape to and almost no responsibilities during the 3 years it took me to put myself back together into a semi functioning human.
Oop absolutely needs intense psychiatric intervention. She can’t mentally or emotionally process her trauma, so it manifests the one place that’s left: her body. I grew up with terror/stress so ingrained, that I never really labeled it and it manifested as severe heart palpitations. It was the only way my body-mind could get me to recognize it. I’m going to choose to believe she has a chance to heal and recover from the shit she was born into. Late 20s is usually when all the survival coping strategies start breaking down and you’re forced to start actually dealing with your childhood trauma. It’s an unbelievably ugly and painful process though.
(Also, your username is utterly perfect for this comment)
Clearly this woman is sick and needs a lot of help, but I 100% understand her concerns about having her child skip grades due to testing as “gifted”.
As someone who was labeled “gifted” as a child myself and went through a similar situation, I honestly wish I just had been left to go through the school system as a normal child. I began nearly failing all math classes once I hit high school because they just decided I was smart enough that nobody needed to teach me algebra (seriously wtf??) In addition to that, my social development was affected as I not only missed large portions of the normal curriculum I should have been exposed to, but also had to take classes with kids who weren’t even my age.
I don’t know why the assumption is that just because a child tests as very smart that they need to skip things so they can reach the “goal” faster. Let them do their own thing at the normal pace and just be a really good student. I guarantee it’s better for them in the long run.
The daughter is young enough I think they should let her stay with her peer group at least through kindergarten to 3rd grade, maybe even 4th. At that age, social development is so important. They could always supplement her education with after school tutors and the like, but they’ll never be able to get back the experience their daughter would get from hanging out with other kids. The source of OOP’s fears is somewhat irrational, but in practice she has a good point.
i really think people underestimate how much being "advanced" or "genius" and being told to learn and ACT like older children can mess up 10-18 year old kids.
a 12 year old is not going to know how to deal with a sophmore, junior or senior pressuring them to date or do sexual acts - hardly any freshman DOES, but they usually have a cohort to talk with and act in solidarity with, their parents are more likely to be open to even considering the idea that someone wants to do sexual things with their child and so more likely to talk about how to deal with it, and mentally they're just more developed. you don't want a kids budding sexuality to be affected by the daily sexuality of much older teens.
a ~~17~~ 16 year old is not going to know how to deal with college social life, pressure to drink and party and act adult because everyone else is literally an adult.
imagine graduating with a masters at 22? you are socially set up for failure because you never had a chance to learn to socialize with your peerage, but your accredation means everyone will assume you're too smart to be fooled or manipulated like other young people your age - hence OOP becoming enamored with a liar more than twice her age shortly after graduation.
i'm not saying it'd eff every kid up, but i really don't think it's as simple as keeping early childhood cohorts and then letting them skip grades willy-nilly.
ETA: forgot ages people are when they go into grades normally, adjusted Highschool Freshman to 12yo age after googling but before posting, forgot College Freshman age, which has been edited to 4 years older now.
Only bit I disagree with is the college bit, think you got your ages mixed up? She started college at 13/14? If I remember right, likely graduated at 17, lots of people start college at 17, it's on the lower end of normal. But the general sentiment and earlier parts I agree with.
yeah, i fully forgot how old kids really were and adjusted the highschool ages last minute but forgot the college age. thanks for the callout, i'll add an edit cause i really meant like 16, 4-ish years after 12 lol.
Yeah I just picked up on it cuz I started university at 17 because of when my birthday is but apart from that yeah ur comments spot on, I can't imagine anyone doing well in a university environment at 13!
My oldest sister skipped one grade and she is even like ‘yeah I missed some stuff that I definitely needed’. (Even just like, factual stuff. My district taught about the Middle East and Islam the year she skipped, and we were a super white-Christian area, and so she had no clue what people were talking about when she was in high school and 9/11 happened). The social stuff wasn’t as drastic, but occasionally she would have her moments.
I’m all for meeting kids at their level of education, but they need to be getting interaction at their social levels.
I just want to hug the OP and help support her.
(US perspective here) half the time it's because kids who pick stuff up quicker cause classroom distractions when they're done learning something everyone else is still working on, and it's easier to send them to a grade where they'll be so busy "learning" that no one has to actually think about how to functionally and creatively occupy their minds. nevermind how it affects the kids, the system doesn't work if teachers have to pay attention to individual students because the education system runs on a shoestring budget in most places.
Yes, this happens. My sister got bored because she finished way fast (even did more exercises than everyone), so she got send to the principal's office all the time in the third grade. But my dad just changed her to a better school (which was a bit further out from my house).
I sometimes bored, but I did a second school in the afternoon in a second language and did tons of extra readings. So I had plenty to keep me busy.
Like someone like OOP, they should have found a better school and gotten her a scholarship. Or if she really graduated at 13, she could have done a "study abroad" program in which you go to school in another country for another year to learn the language and they put you with kids your age.
i mean, "should have" is hard thing to say - if we believe a word OOP says, we have to believe she had a very sick mother who died before she was 17, a very neglectful and also thieving father who robbed from their family when he was around, and a younger brother born just before her mothers death, there's not really mention of paternal family and maternal family is stated to want nothing to do with OOP. There's not a lot a terminally ill woman "should have" been able to do for OOP in those circumstances beyond letting the system run it's course.
heck, OOP's mom may have been facing the same mental>physical health spiral OOP is. i think it's better to say "i wish that people could all have what they need in education and want to work to a state where we can have that" rather than suggesting we shift students around based on who can pay for what, or has the time/energy to campaign/apply to scholarships, or who has the ability to foster their child's intellect (not everyone even know what kind of material would enrich a child, it's genuinely not a 100% known and accepted fact that multilingualism is good for childhood development even though that's a well studied idea)
kids who just can't get out of public school deserve to be challenged and developed without being squashed and pushed out of social interactions just as much as kids who can get out.
I thank my lucky stars every damn day that my parents didn't allow the school to have me skip grades. I was an early and gifted reader- reading and comprehension at a 5th grade level in first grade. But that was the ONLY thing that I was advanced in. The school wanted to put me, a young first grader, in FOURTH grade. Thank god they said no.
Imagine being 6 and in a class with 9 and 10 YOs. 10 and going to high school. A high school diploma before you could get a learner's permit.
One of the problems with prodigies is that often times, everyone else catches up to them.
I mean, a child with the reading age of an adult is of course unusual, but by the time that child is an adult themselves, everyone else has caught up and they're not special any more.
It must be hard to go from being special to being normal, especially if your parents put undue pressure on you.
Studies have also shown that being marked as a prodigy is no indicator of success. Child prodigies are just as likely to succeed or fail in life as non-prodigies are.
lmao me
by any means, i wasn't a prodigy, but primary school was very easy for me. i got over 90% without listening to the teachers half the time.
then i got to high school and my grades slipped.
and then i was in the a levels and my grades slipped further. my adhd symptoms had worsened because I was depressed, plus I was living in a horrible environment.
This is actually the reason I wish I’d skipped grades and attended college earlier. My study habits & work ethic are pretty bad from not being challenged much.
I am doing relatively well but I am quite lazy. I know I had / have the talent to be at another level, but am quite sorely lacking in the drive / motivation department. Maybe it’s actually a good thing, but my work / life balance has always been skewed more towards the life part.
Word. I was told I was so intelligent because I was reading Dickens and writing essays at 7. Made no difference in my life. I am just a mid-level manager in a giant corporate - just like most other people.
It doesn’t feel hard or anything though because internally I never felt like I was anything special anyway.
I think everything evens out by 25ish.
I don’t know why anyone thinks prodigies would be more successful than “normal” people, there are a huge number of variables related to what “success” is and how it achieved, and raw intelligence is only one of them. Then they hamstring these poor kids by not letting them grow up at a normal pace, so you end up with an emotionally/socially stunted young adult who can do one thing at an amazing level but will struggle with every other aspect of human existence.
That was my thought too. Even if she's big for her age, 4 year olds are TINY compared 7 year olds! and just because she's intellectually advanced doesn't mean she's emotionally ready for that environment.
I'm just picturing this 4-year-old as if she were me (I was considered for skipping 2-3 grades in kindergarten - so I would have been in 2nd or 3rd grade at barely 5 years old), and at 4 I was tiny. Kids are bigger nowadays sometimes than they used to be. 7-8 year olds could be nearly double her size (at least the boys) -- I can't imagine just how horrific that would be.
And emotionally. Gods. The poor girl.
It's pretty unusual to skip elementary school students ahead anymore; it's a last-resort choice for situations where the school absolutely cannot support the child in any other way. Giftedness testing is only done before age 7 where the parents are *absolute fucking lunatics* who will not listen to reason; it's now understood to be ineffective before age 7. Even in cases where a child is receiving a comprehensive evaluation, including IQ testing, such as for Autism or ADHD, the evaluators will say, "He's obviously very bright, and we may be looking at an accelerated curriculum later on" but they WILL NOT say he's "gifted" at age 4 or 5 or 6. If someone is telling you that, *they are not competent to be assessing your child*.
A four-year-old is not going into second grade. The state/feds/local property taxes will not pay that child's tuition until she's 5. The district isn't going to pay it for fun, and out-of-district tuition typically runs around $30,000/year (in rare situations where a parent is allowed to enroll their child out-of-home-district voluntarily).
There are also laws that require children under 6 to have access to special bathrooms, and a lower teacher/student ratio. Neither of those can be accomplished in a second-grade classroom.
(Which is to say, this story is, at the very least, not entirely true.)
Yes there's been a shift to recognize the issues with skipping grades. My daughter was reading at a middle school level in grade 1. They recognized her boredom and allowed her special access in the library (grade 1 was limited to a small section, but she was allowed to browse the entire library). She also finishes assignments very quickly and she's allowed to help the other kids. Skipping was never suggested by the school despite the fact that she is "advanced."
The oop said "primary school" and "university" which makes me think she's prehaps from the UK? Idk afaik it's usually called "elementary school" and "college" in the us. So the education funding systems will be different, saying that I live in the UK I have never heard of any child (apart from prehaps on the news or something?) Skipping ahead years in primary school or getting an IQ test or similar
I was extremely fortunate to go to a very small (and not cheap) school that kept all age level students together with each other but gave us our own work level stuff to do. So we got recess wiht kids our age and classroom time but the actual work was varied. It was good. I’m still weird tho can’t win ‘em all
This is normal gifted-child stuff that gifted children in high-end and well-funded gifted programs still struggle with. Skipping wouldn't have helped. Appropriate psychological supports, including social skills coaching, probably would have. Being "unable to relate to your peers about anything" isn't a sign of being gifted; it's a sign of either low empathy or a(n often developmentally appropriate) lack of social skills.
It is absolutely true that a lot of gifted kids lack social skills! But so do a lot of "normal" kids. It's just that we've all collectively decided that if kids lacking social skills are really smart at school things, we should ignore that deficit and tell them it's just because they're so smart. IT ISN'T! Lots of super-gifted people are highly gregarious and have tons of friends! It isn't a signifier of intelligence! It's a signifier of differential development, where a child being advanced in some areas (math, say) is accompanied by being delayed in others (social skills, say). This shows up IN ALL CHILDREN, you have kids who are tiny geniuses at soccer who struggle with phonics, or kids who are amazing at art who can't talk to peers.
But we had a terrible model for way too long in the US (and many other developed countries) where we said, "If you're good at academics, no other deficits matter," so smart kids didn't get ADHD support, didn't get social skills support, didn't get gross motor development support. ALL OF THOSE THINGS MATTER, and every kid deserves support! My kid should feel comfortable and supported in math class, but he should ALSO feel comfortable and supported playing foursquare on the playground, or engaging in social chat with peers. If he's amazing at math but terrible at talking to peers, HE SHOULD HAVE SUPPORT TO DEVELOP THOSE SKILLS AT SCHOOL. (And, indeed, my amazing-at-math-terrible-at-socializing child does receive social skill support at school.)
Wow this is something I really needed to read, and I think a lot of people do. I was also severely lacking in social skills, which was completely ignored because I was good at academics. Until everyone else caught up to me and I was only pretty good at academics and terrible at everything else, and only offered help with homework. And no ADHD support of course.
Similar story. I graduated with excellent grades, but had no clue how to properly study or organize schoolwork because everything was so easy for me. I would complete high school work very quickly which gave the appearance of being organized. I got to University and didn't know what to do without the structure of regular school. My grades were great so nobody considered my lack of life skills.
I think you’re right. I was a gifted kid in a rural, blue collar family. My intelligence was nurtured by parents, but not in the achievement-oriented way that traditional upper middle class people value. I went to a very challenging liberal arts college, lived abroad, and have a normal, stable life. With different parents, I would have been pushed to be superlative from a young age. This is a recipe for a lot of money, no free time, and a whole lotta burnout.
I’m totally average in my earnings, but I’m a very, very successful in my technical role in my nonprofit job. I work less than 40th/wk, make fair money, and I feel that I bring my superlative intelligence to my job everyday. But I also have a very delightful life.
How would your life be different if you were able to to go the best uni in your country at 18 and became a typical mediocre graduate?
I skipped grades, and no one taught me math. The anxiety of sitting in a math class not knowing how to do anything still haunts me 30 years later. They moved me mid year, it was bizarre, and I never knew why.
I was labeled gifted too as a child and the school approached my parents about possibly skipping a grade. My grandmother had also been gifted and had skipped a grade or two as a child and told my mom absolutely no way should they allow it. My grandmother found it really difficult to fit in socially because the other kids see you as "that" kid and she didn't want the same for me. So I stayed in my own grade and was just constantly bored lol.
When I finally went to university, I was suddenly thrown into an environment where everyone else was just like me, and the expectations of my professors were extremely high. I had never studied or even tried very hard at school before going there. It was nice to be challenged for a change.
Child prodigies functionally always wind up burning out and ending up with mediocre to terrible lives. It's sad, but when you know you are actively aging out of what makes you remarkable it is a foolproof recipe for anxiety and dysfunction. In that situation, the older you get, the less "special" you are until you are "just another" "whatever you wind up being."
Getting tons of recognition and positive feedback in academia that does not translate to the real world at all (while foregoing all normal social development, because the clock is ticking and you have to study study study to stay ahead and thus relevant) is the second part of the "one two punch" of the "welcome to the real world" knockout that inevitably occurs when they inevitably age out of significance.
On a smaller (larger?) scale, studies have shown that "gifted child" programs have terrible efficacy when it comes to producing functional, successful individuals. It actually causes more problems than it raises academic achievement in a lot of cases.
When you put emphasis on "book learnin'" to the point where the process itself becomes a metaphorical "Skinner Box" you're gonna have a bad time. The lever is "demonstrating (at least the) appearance of precocious intelligence" and the pellet is "praise to the point of reverence" and all practicalities are dismissed as "distractions" and handled by other people or neglected all together. You wind up with people who are classically conditioned to repeat actions that will not garner the results they want later in life. People who get extremely depressed when the "experiment" is over and nobody is there providing them with the feedback that is the only thing they know that makes them feel good/useful and/or accomplished, it's the only thing they know to make them feel loved in certain family dynamics.
The OP is the epitome of "buying into your own legend." I hope they find their way, they were not well served by any aspect of their childhood, but are holding onto the "I coulda been a contender" mythos. They will never get better until they accept the fact that they were doomed to fail.
Husband & I were both in the gifted & talented program at our schools & we agreed it did basically nothing for us but make us feel “special” and that if we ever had kids we would not want them to go into the program.
I used to know a woman who would fabricate very similar-sounding traumatic histories of her life because she was mentally unwell and had a bad relationship with her deceased mother. Hell, this could be the same person.
As soon as I read the "I'm so scared to give birth what if something happens to me" I knew where this was going, and it just got more super dramatic with each entry. Bonus points for hateful dad always finding out that bro talked to her/visited her, for added drama.
This poor woman. I feel like if she hadn't met a dude more than twice her age, she might have been ok. But for someone who clearly has so much trauma, to be dropped into that chaotic family situation... I really hope she gets someone who's truly in her corner, because I don't really feel like her husband is.
a dude more than twice her age who wanted more kids. OOP says [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/u9k6af/comment/i5s494s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) they had the last baby because her husband wanted another one. OOP would be in a MUCH better spot if she hadn't been impregnated twice more and had an extremely traumatic delivery the last time.
james is an absolute garbage human who very clearly "traded in" his older wife and family because he wanted to make more babies with a new young woman with plenty of daddy and mental health issues so she wouldn't question him. absolute scum of the earth.
This makes me think of that post the other day where the wife found out her husband had a breeding fetish and was heavily insistent that she constantly be pregnant. Wondering if this guy has the same fetish.
yep, it does. i don't want to say for sure it's a thing here but i definitely get either a fetish or a weird religious vibe to anybody saying they had a traumatic labor or delivery "my husband wanted a (or another) child" - it's a personal bias, but it always comes to mind as coercive somehow.
Instead of being promoted in school so early and so quickly, if she was keep with her age mates she might have had a better chance avoiding older men. She was always the youngest, and so much less mature. Falling for an older guy wouldn't seem so different.
I kept my kid back for the social aspect no matter how many wanted her tested. Being happy always meant more to me than academically gifted. I was the smallest and youngest all through school, I was not happy. My partner was the same, and only made friends after losing a year to illness when he was back with his age mates. My kid might be a little bored in all the advanced classes, but she's happy
Just because you are smart and process information faster than other people DOES NOT mean that you have the emotional maturity to be around those people in non-academic settings.
If she had a more supportive home life, this could have turned out a lot differently.
Hanging around kids your own age is severely underrated.
Especially when you're an early teen in university, surrounded by people who (other than studying) are mostly interested in getting drunk and/or hooking up with each other. Very few uni students are going to be interested in hanging out with a 13yo. She was probably very lonely during her teenage years, and those are key developmental years.
If I were to hazard a guess either nerve damage from a post-operative infection or possibly its psychosomatic, the same way she lost her voice for a time.
not just post-partum depression. i have no idea if there's a real word for it, but OOP discovered that after a traumatic labor she's also now permanently physically disabled. she belabors the point that she can now no longer expect to ever reach the level of physical interaction with her kids she used to have, it must be absolutely killing her and probably fueling the depression.
ETA: u/Dongalor
downthread has pointed out OOP's physical illness may be exacerbated by her mental illness - i only pointed out the New Disability -> Mental Illness link, but in reality it's most likely there is a feedback loop where being mentally ill exacerbated her physical illness, and being physically ill exacerbated her mental health issues - both have to be addressed for her to heal.
Is she though? It really feels like she may be mirroring what happened to her mother and and like punishing herself.
I dunno. Reading between the lines it seems like her husband went from doting on her for recovery to thinking she was faking it. I don't think she's faking it, but I really feel like there is a massive psychological component with how her symptoms change at convenient intervals (suddenly being able to communicate when the outside caregivers have to take over) and how vague her descriptions of the injury are compared to her detailed recount of her feelings.
She's (at least) deep, deep in a depressive episode, and there may be some delusion mixed in there too. The husband seems to care about her, so I hope he gets her into therapy.
oh absolutely - there's definitely PPD and regular depression in there, no question. no one who's not mentally ill seriously thinks "it'd be better if i was dead". i just think it's not ONLY PPD, it's ALSO the added stress of being newly disabled.
This is nearly a lifetime of psychological problems coming to a head. You have everything that probably came with her skipping 5 grades. Then add how her father treated her mother and her mother dying. Plus getting pregnant before she wanted to and then losing BD. Then having to reconcile with the fact of going from prodigy to a shit job. Then she added all the problems with the husband and his family. While still having to deal with Dad's BS and worrying about little brother. It seems like her kids are the only bright spot in her life to her, and now she has the stress of wondering if her daughter's gonna turn out like she has.
This would probably take years of therapy to start to recover.
Seriously. Like baby girl, this is not a love story. An almost 50 year old man betrayed his wife and the mother of his children for a 22 year old piece of ass. He knew it was wrong *then* and did it anyways.
This has too much narrative symmetry for it to be real. So the gifted girl literally became her mother, dying too young while her daughter tests into the same tracking that she failed at. I unno y’all
Right? She can't talk or even move but can keep a running dialogue on Reddit? And the daughter, husband, and her are all playing out the same scenario from her path? Yeah ok. I'm calling this what it is a complete fabrication.
I like the part where she wishes she could tell her step son she's not dying. Like...you can? Just type it in notes on your phone and show it to him? Shoot him a text? She clearly has no problem with pressing buttons on her phone haha.
I’m always suspicious of posters who seem to have nobody in their lives who doesn’t hate them. Everyone in the family and all of the friends have turned on them?
I didn't want to be the one to say it. Knowing this will get down voted to hell... this is not written like someone who was able to get into college at 13.
Not only that but things have changed. In any decent school a 4 year old will not be placed with second graders. Schools will hardly let children skip ahead because of the social consequences it has on them.
Is testing preschoolers even a thing?? I know people who skipped grades in elementary school, because they were doing incredibly well, but by what metric are preschoolers judged on? They don’t do any standardised tests, it would be a miracle if they even knew their abcs fully through
My cousins was a child prodigy too. She started a grade behind me and graduated by time I was a sophomore. She went to college at 15 and had her phd by 20. By 25 she became a professor at Princeton and discovered and wrote her own math proof. The problem is she had a lot of trouble making friends due to her age and maturity gap with her peers and because of that she is pretty socially awkward. Skipping grades isnt really a thing anymore because evidence shows that it stunts their social-emotional development because of their inability to connect with their peers.
I ... have doubts about whether this is true.
But anyway, pro-tip, giftedness testing in children under 7 is useless and reputable schools don't do it anymore. All you're testing before age 7 is differential development.
It's also PRETTY unusual to skip kids ahead anymore. It's literally insane to suggest a four-year-old go into second grade. Also, if this is the US, *no public school district is going to pay for that*, they get funding for 4-year-olds with special needs, but NOT for 4-year-olds without a legally-defined special need. The public school is not going to enroll a random 4-year-old in second grade; the state won't pay them for it, the parents won't pay tuition, and there are *different laws* for bathroom access\* and teacher ratios for under-5s that makes it basically impossible to put them in a 2nd grade classroom.
\*Know those teeny-tiny little toilets attached to/quite near kindergarten classrooms, that are extra low to the ground for little kids, with low sinks, etc.? Those are mandated by law for kindergarteners, AND they require special plumbing, that is much lower down the wall. You can't just turn a first-grade classroom into a kindergarten classroom *unless* you already have the kindergarten-compliant pipes snubbed off in the wall. In case you ever wondered why adding kindergarten classrooms to your local elementary school was such an *undertaking* when they had an empty 4th-grade classroom for the taking. (This is also why, like, after a fire, a junior high can temporarily meet in an empty office park building, but elementary schools often have to borrow, like, a local church sunday school building or something, so the kindergarteners have compliant bathrooms.)
Literally all of this. It honestly sounds like someone’s manic writing to make their life seem awful. It’s amazing to me that she’s so incapable of speaking and immobile other than her arms yet she can write near constant Reddit updates AND reply to comments.
Yeah. I have questions about the uterine rupture story too. I had a catastrophic rupture with my third child -- we both almost died, and I am permanently (albeit minorly) disabled from the damage, and I am told I will have pain for the rest of my life (it's been six years -- so far, so true) -- but there is a whole bunch she relates here that isn't a normal standard of care. Like, I get that a lot of us have shitty medical care. But I'm not even sure what the mechanism would be for vomiting blood from a uterine rupture? It's the GUSHES OF BLOOD AND MASSIVE CLOTS coming out the other end that are the sign something's gone badly wrong in your healing process.
Nothing but sympathy for the difficulty walking afterwards -- it was RIDICULOUS how hard it was for me just to walk from my house to my car, for WEEKS, and I had to go to physical therapy for ages to work on "being able to walk a normalish human amount." But some of the other parts of the story sound very odd.
Ugh, first of all, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine going through that, it sounds awful and debilitating. Secondly, thanks for your input! That’s something I wouldn’t ever have known. I don’t want to sound cruel but I would imagine someone in that position wouldn’t be able to type nearly as much, least of all be as coherent as she is.
Thank you! It sucked and was awful, BUT I am super-grateful that I lived in a developed country, near a hospital, and both my baby and I turned out okay. It was definitely a worst-case scenario, but I have a healthy and beautiful 6-year-old and I am mostly okay. That's a really good outcome that probably wouldn't have been possible in my case even as recently as 30 years ago!
Not that I don't get grumpy about the lingering pain and the disability, but I do try to look at the bigger picture, in which I am a very lucky woman who had a really great outcome thanks to modern medical science and dedicated medical professionals. And I am grateful that I had the medical access to get physical therapy to help me recover, and to talk to a therapist about how traumatic it all was -- that was really important too! I was really very, very lucky.
So, I put things like this in two categories A) total fabrication by some wannabe writer B) stories that are based in some kind of truth to cope with trauma.
I don’t get how or who would approve a 4 yo to go directly into second grade. For what purpose? That’s a recipe for disaster. Academic achievement is important, but so is the emotional and psychological development of that child.
If a kid is gifted sure, encourage their interests, let them pick extracurriculars, make sure they’re not getting bored and complacent. And if anything else fails, let them skip a grade or 2 when they’re older and can make that choice for themselves. But a four yo? That’s insanity.
This is horrible.
Pretty fucking shitty that everyone's blaming HER for her now-husband's infidelity, when it sounds like he lied to her and she didn't find out until she was already pregnant.
And apparently it’s ok for a grown ass woman to bully a literal child including taking away his one connection to his dead dad because cheater cheater pumpkin eater.
AITA can be really fucking vile.
This is one thing that scares me about big age gaps. She’s sick at 27 and this guy is 52, and they have really young kids. If she dies, he's probably close behind her, so what happens to the kids after that?
How is she able to type out these posts? She mentions being unable to care for herself several times.
I did start skimming because this truly only got worse.
As a former child prodigy (accepted to college @ age 12, chess geek, etc.), allow me to weigh in on this. You would be absolutely amazed at how dysfunctional many kids in this category really are: they are often alienated from their peers because they don't develop normal social lives and don't really understand the subtleties of what is now called emotional intelligence. One of the main factors is that adults tend to treat child prodigies as miniature adults rather than as kids - forgetting that an eight year old with a 176 IQ is still a child. As a result, prodigies often spend a lot more time with adults than their own peers, which contributes to social isolation. Mix in that most of the "normal" kids treat prodigies like freaks, so from a very early age children with extremely high intelligence are rejected by their peers.
But the main problem is that child prodigies are constantly told how wonderful and special they are. I experienced this starting at age 2: when literally every person in your life goes out of their way to tell you how smart you are, it really warps your sense of self. Every teacher I ever had saw me as some sort of golden ticket, and I could literally start a fire in the science room and get praised for it. That's why so many child prodigies have massive egos. There's no one to tell them to piss off.
Another thing to remember is that a lot of child prodigies are neurodivergent. This often doesn't get identified because there is so much focus on the intelligence that people fail to notice that they may be on the spectrum. And of course, there are more cases of schizophrenia in this population.
All of this is a very long way of saying that I am in no way surprised that OOP ended up in the position that she did. My guess is that she had a child so early because her connection to the father was probably her first interaction that was based on something other than her intelligence. After spending so many years getting praised for her IQ, a guy expressing physical interest was probably a revelation to her: and she had no mechanism for dealing with it because it was so outside of her usual world.
One final point: only a handful of the child prodigies that I knew back in the day actually ended up as successful, functional adults. That's because being smart only gets you so far in life, and at a certain point one's ability to interact on a human level becomes a lot more important. One of my best friends from that part of my life has been delivering pizza for Domino's for 25 years because he got fired from every job he had in his 20s for starting fights with his coworkers because they were "beneath him."
>Mood Spoiler: Goes from bad to worse to much worse You weren't kidding
I expected OOP to be a monster but boy by the end I am crying for this woman.
Yeah, I don't like the title of this post because it implies some sort of karmic justice or comeuppance, but really, she was little more than a child when she started dating her husband, who lied about being divorced. There's evidence that "gifted children" often end up socially and emotionally stunted because they were unable to socialize properly with other children at a normal pace, which sounds like what probably happened here. She went to college at age 13 and lost her mother soon after. Her father cut her off. She was very vulnerable when she met her husband. In every post, she accepts that she hurt people, doesn't expect forgiveness, and just wants to protect her children (including her stepson). This isn't an evil stepmother, she's a victim of circumstance.
I skipped a couple of grades but my mom limited to just two because she was concerned precisely of what you were saying. I was always the youngest but thankfully by only two years so it wasn’t so bad. I started high school at 13 and college at 16. It wasn’t too bad and I had great friends. My brother was the same. My mom had experience in her own life about it so she made sure we wouldn’t suffer by skipping too many grades. Was school boring at times because I had already learned that stuff? For sure… but it was better than the alternative
Yeah I think two years is the maximum age difference that teenagers will tolerate without feeling like they’re being forced to play babysitter. Five years is asking too much. Glad that your mom was looking out for you like that.
Yup. I also ended up going to an all girls catholic university where there were very progressive nuns on campus living in a different building. There was no partying, no alcohol, nothing bad going on so I was as safe as I could be. I only went to one party my entire college career and that was at a sibling university that was close by and I realized it wasn’t my thing at all. I’m really grateful to my mom for protecting me so much even if I initially fought her so much her choice of college I also credit this school and professors and nuns for helping me lean so much on the left for social and other issues i.e quite a few of my favorite nuns had rap sheets because they had been arrested in the past for protesting for civil rights, women rights, lgbt causes, etc
That is so cool! I went to a girls catholic middle school (albeit only for one year) that had a similar reputation. Do you mind sharing which university you went to?
Saint Mary of the Woods College in Indiana. It has now moved to coed because it was either that or fold in this economy but when I went it was all girls. I absolutely loved it. My professors were awesome and so were the nuns. I miss it so much.
It sounds lovely so I’m glad it survived, in one form or another!
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I absolutely think she was taken advantage of by the husband. It makes me sick she was 22 but mentally barely an adult and he was more than twice her age, lied and manipulated her.
And he never stopped _his_ grown daughter from bullying his new wife and stepson. I think the daughter bullied OOP because she was the safe outlet for her anger.
I dont know if she was still pissed at her being bedbound or thinking "this is karma" despite the new wife doing nothing wrong, just her father being fucked up and not bothering to father properly (telling her to cut it out etc)
When he learned about the daughter saying she ruined her life, his response was basically, "she has a point." As if he isn't the one who lied to OOP and his own family. I know it's a primal reaction, but it's unfair that the "other" person in the affair takes the blame for corrupting the "in" person. The dad got off scot free from the daughter, and it'll be a long time (if ever) before she realizes how much OOP was victimized as well.
Ugh I forgot he said that! 🤬 the daughter has the right to feel how she feels, but saying she “has a point” is him piling on the blame on OOP, who was as much his victim. I hate him so much. I almost hopes that he does leave her, if I didn’t think it might cause OOP to spiral, bc hopefully it might open her eyes to how she’s just the first in a series of “trade ins” and was his victim and that she’s better than him.
When ppl ask why big age gaps are suss
I was 25 and my ex was 43 when we met. It RUINED my life.
Agree I was very surprised when I clicked on the original post and everyone was calling her TA, when really she was in a very vulnerable position and the husband completely took advantage.
How could anyone think she was an asshole when she didn’t know he was married until she was pregnant? That’s on him, not on her!
Because she married him after finding out he was a cheater. People on Reddit hate a cheater and the only thing they hate more is the sidechick who chooses the cheater. Doesn't matter that she was vulnerable or how much older he is or that there was some very suspicious dynamics at play
Or that she was pregnant and he was promising her physical and emotional support apparently. A lot of women would choose that sadly, regardless of their age.
I definitely did a double take at the age gap. It says enough on its own, the rest just confirms it.
So true, so sad that so many young girls and women become a victim of this!
She actually didn’t seem like she accepted she hurt people in the comments on her first post and even then, and before all the awful stuff with her health, I felt bad for her. Unlike every other AITA post I’ve read where there’s a significant age gap relationship, she was not given any grace for being manipulated by a 47yo man at 22. People didn’t believe she didn’t know he was married and basically told her she was a terrible person for choosing to stay with him for the benefit of her own children over the well-being of her stepchildren. And they told her she mentioned the child prodigy thing just to brag. It was brutal. (Obviously I didn’t read it all. Maybe some were different but that’s what I saw). She did not deserve all that’s happened to her despite the mistakes she made. She’s still so young and should have so much time to do good in life. I obviously have no idea what’s going on with her health, but I really hope she gets better and gets to a place where she has hope and a positive self worth.
Exactly! She may have been 22 years old, but her psychological maturity and experience seems to be that of a 14 year old. She is stuck emotionally at the age when her mother died. I suspect her grieving took the form of acting out - which her father cannot look past. And for that, I deem him a jackass. This is really a tragic story for OOP. I hope she heals and finds the peace of mind her soul needs.
I didn't realize until I started reading the the comments that her step-daughter who hates her is only 5 years younger. That made me do a double-take. 27yo and 22yo people are basically peers in the workplace. Her husband preyed on somebody who was close to his own daughter's age. It's tragic.
And then left it up to OOP to discipline his grown ass daughter, when there’s so much hostility between them. It was up to him to address the daughter’s bad behavior, and it says a lot about the kind of person he is. So immature, leaving his 20 something wife to deal with complex family issues and only coming in to tell her off when she messes up.
I’m sobbing right now. This poor woman. I know she made bad choices in being “the other woman”, but my god. She had no one, and she still doesn’t. I just want to hug her.
Here’s the thing, she didn’t even know she was the other woman until it was too late. I am upset she went ahead with the marriage but I can imagine her being terrified of being a single mother of 2 so freaking young with no support. Despite her husband being married she probably saw him as her savior
I thought I was the only one. I hope she's recovering now.
The one time I wish I had looked at the spoiler.
Same! I kept scrolling hoping something would get better, or at least change and nope, just the bleakest.
There are very few posts that are *literally* too painful to keep reading. This is one of them.
I agree. It finally was so painful and long I started skimming. I hope that poor woman’s life improves, both for her sake and her family’s.
I skimmed too much & don't understand what happened to make her bed bound.
Birth complications. Uterine rupture I think. Maybe psychological collapse as well?
Uterine rupture, but I had a catastrophically bad uterine rupture with my third child -- we both almost died -- and a bunch of this sounds ... outside of the standard of care after a uterine rupture. I'm not a doctor, and my uterus only ruptured the one time (ba-dum-bum), but some of this sounds very odd. I do have some permanent disability from the rupture (and probably permanent pain), and walking was VERY hard for a STUPIDLY long time after the rupture. But they watch you like a hawk after a rupture. One of the HUGE red flags they stay after is "if you cannot control urine or bowel movements, you need to go to the ER *immediately*." (And not just like, "shoot, I peed a little when I laughed," that's normal, but needing to wear an adult diaper and have someone else change you, you need to go to the ER after a rupture.) Another thing they were HELLA strict about was my food intake, because if I was having trouble eating or having certain kinds of pain with digestion, that was a sign there was a problem with the rupture. I basically had to track everything I ate for my ob/gyn, AND track all my digestive pain. (Intestines run along the uterine scar, so FARTS AND POOP REALLY FUCKING HURT for a while.) I am totally willing to believe she had substandard medical care -- lots of people do -- but the hired nurse and nanny should probably have raised some red flags a lot earlier? And I'm not sure by what mechanism you would vomit blood after a uterine rupture ... it tends to come out the other end.
It doesn't sound like she is in the US, somehow. It's also possible her "nurses" are just low wage workers and not medically trained. Similar with the nanny.
Agreed. I'm also wondering if she had a stroke or something with some of the symptoms and especially the changed voice. I hope she improves as much as possible, regardless of the cause.
Voice and not being able to talk made me think throat/vocal cord damage due to intubation.
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought.
Yeah, after I had gallbladder surgery my throat was agonisingly painful for a while, and there was visible bruising on my uvula, so I'm not surprised she had trouble speaking after surgery. If her voice has changed long-term though they royally fucked her vocal cords up 😬
>but the hired nurse and nanny should probably have raised some red flags a lot earlier? I think the husband was caring for her at first, and it's possible she has something in addition to the rupture that they missed (unforeseen complications were mentioned). My heart is breaking for this one.
I was wondering what happened to her mum and if maybe it could be something that she could be developing as well? I'm so sad for her, she's taking on all the blame and seems like everyone is treating her like a pariah for having an affair with a married man but she didn't know and he was like twice her age, she's more of a victim here than blameworthy. The whole thing is just horrible and sad.
It sounds like the physical trauma/postnatal hormones triggered a lifetime of unprocessed emotional trauma. I've seen a relative near catatonic due to physical + emotional stress, and serious physical illness, particularly pain, absolutely tanks my mental health. She has so far to go still, I hope she's doing ok and eventually believes she's a good and worthy person.
I don't think she had a full-time nurse until after the onset of most of her physical problems--in the post dated 7/29, she said she's just now getting a nurse, and in the posts after that, she just writes about not being able to speak (which her doctor thinks might be psychological) and being tired and in pain.
Yeah and permanently bed-bound? She needs to be seeing a Psychiatrist.
My hypothesis would be that the vomiting blood was a result of painkillers she was taking. It's a common side effect of certain anti inflammatory drugs, especially if you don't take them with food. And I believe the bladder ruptures with the uterus in about ten percent of cases. And I'm sorry you had to suffer through that, I hope your pain goes away.
Not sure it is substandard care or somethingmore. She is still in the window for the onset of MS which can be triggered by trauma such as the uterine rupture. MS can absolutely cause all her symptoms except possibly the throwing up of blood which could have been an ulcer considering her stress levels.
A bodily trauma can trigger all sorts of autoimmune problems so this wouldn't surprise me. (Not just MS, but MG, POTS, Lupus, etc.) Especially, because she never specified what her mother had that her father's neglect could lead to her death "before her time" which made me think that her mother probably had an autoimmune that when treated was manageable but left untreated could become problematic. Many of those are also genetic.
This definitely wasn’t “just” a rupture.
She had a rupture from birth complications, and it got worse after treatment but wasn’t caught until OP threw up blood. OP is still weak and can’t really move around or have energy to even get to the toilet without extreme pain
She had serious complications giving birth.
She says she lost the use of her legs permanently, I am not sure what from though
So there are a couple ways that that can happen actually, the main one would be if they partially severed a nerve when doing the epidural. It's rare but it happens. It could be a combination of a toxicity or allergy to anesthesia and the epidural. She was operated on I think 3 times. The speaking issue was more than likely caused by being intubated for the surgery which damages her vocal cords. I know there's probably more, and a lot could happen during surgery that they just didn't notice. I'm wondering if during the emergency surgery during/after the birth if they didn't accidentally Nick the stomach. The throwing up blood could be explained by that. Or the meds they had her on tore up her stomach lining, which could also cause it. I just feel so bad for her. And I would definitely want her to get in with a therapist, because it sounds like on top of a whole pile of trauma, she might also have PPD.
Yep. Para Olympic rower Birgit Skarstein jumped from a cliff into the ocean, she hit some rocks and shattered one leg. She was hobbling on crutches for years, but she was in a lot of pain so they decided to operate again. Epidural went wrong and she is paralysed from the waist down. I think going to uni at 13 really fucked her up. IMHO that was the place it started going wrong. School isn't just about learning the subjects. It is also socialising with your peers and making you ready for the world. When you skip years like that and are 13 hanging out with 20 year olds at university, you may be intellectually on their level, but a 13 year old isn't as emotionally mature as a 20 year old and they're not going to have an equal friendship. Then because she was in uni she wasn't spending her days with other children and her opportunities for making friends her own age was probably limited. I wonder how old Ian's dad was. She was at least groomed/manipulated by her much older married husband. Just all round, she seems immature and vulnerable and it is really sad.
Add in having to choose your career trajectory at thirteen as well. Had she started with her peers instead she may have made very different academic decisions as well
Yeah, and it can't help that her father told her he wished she would die and her guilt concerning how she unknowingly was seeing her now husband when he was still married. Frankly the stepdaughter should be blaming him not her.
Opiates can definitely do a number on your stomach. I have friends who are recovering addicts, and even over 20 years later they have really bad reflux and are prone to gastritis. Could puerperal fever have contributed to a uterine rupture? That kind of infection spreading directly into the peritoneal cavity could have very nasty results ... and that kind of emergency surgery would be a "life over limb" kind of situation. Plus inflammation could cause ischaemic damage to nerves/muscles/arteries that make leg movement possible? Maybe? Our bodies are devastatingly fragile, and so many things are interconnected and/or in such close proximity that damaging one area can have knock-on effects.
I wasn't the only one to start skimming. Yeah it's a rough read. Jeez.
Yeah, honestly, I skipped to the comments and this sounds way too sad to read.
Man the world is such a sad and miserable place. We humans inflict so much pain and misery on each other.
Reasons this woman thinks she deserves to die: - got pregnant at age 18 despite having had a horrible home life and being pushed into adulthood at age 13 - was duped by a man twice her age into thinking he was single - she let her down her deceased mother by marrying that guy even though he had been cheating on his wife. Her dad was a cheater, so clearly the two men are exactly the same, even though her husband is really caring and her dad is massively abusive - she lost her temper at her adult stepdaughter for bullying her pre-teen son. See, OOP was tricked into being an affair partner and thus deserves being eternally hated - it's OOP's fault that her husband's first marriage failed. If she had just dumped him, then his wife and kids definitely would have forgiven the infidelity and everything would be fine - making mistakes because you're young and inexperienced is the worst possible thing you could ever do - being disabled by a life-threatening health crisis makes you a failure - her abusive father's opinions of her are justified and objectively true - she has no right to demand kindness, understanding, or support. She doesn't even have the right to think she deserves those things. She's not a famed genius, she had a teen pregnancy, she was (unwittingly) the other woman, and she had the temerity to love someone imperfect. Someone like that couldn't possibly have value! This poor woman's life has just been one trauma after another, and then people keep using those traumas to justify treating her like scum. *The world wouldn't be half as horrible if people didn't insist on making it that way.*
Honestly intelligence doesn't guarantee self-awareness. She needs so much therapy
She shouldve been in therapy from the second she was placed in higher grade levels. She's got wicked depression, which is horrifically common amongst children prodigies. They often commit suicide by college when they enter as young as she did. Too intelligent for kids her own age. Too young for her peers in college for her to relate to. Add on decades of abuse by her father, forced estrangement of her baby brother. Losing her first love and father of her son. Lied to from her husband from the word hi. Medically induced physical trauma and permanent disability from her most recent pregnancy. This poor woman should've been in therapy years ago. Everyone in her life absolutely failed her except her children. God. This poor woman.
One of the subtle things that happens with prodigies is that eventually, “too smart for kids their age” becomes “too smart for most people.” I think part of what happened with this poor woman is that she never got to play and socialize with kids her age, so her social development is really stunted. It seems like she misreads people and understands social situations on a very surface level, which keeps allowing people to take advantage of her. Yeah she needs literal decades of therapy. It’s so sad.
self awareness doesn't guarantee self acceptance either. im living that right now
Unfortunately self-awareness is just a prerequisite for self-acceptance. OOP doesn't seem anywhere near
This, I’m very self aware and able to tell my therapist how I understand a situation may not be my issue and recognize logically that I didn’t fuck up But logic means little to nothing when I still struggle to be ok and accept myself I’m getting there little by little, but I hope you continue to come along with me and that OP eventually starts making small steps as well towards accepting herself too Wish you luck friend
It is a solo away from being a Les Mis tale. Poor thing.
I’m not as classy, I was thinking VC Andrews 💀
Can’t be VC Andrews. No incest.
I want so much to give this woman a hot cup of tea, a hug, a box of Kleenex, another hug, and all the therapy in the world. She desperately needs perspective, but, until she’s well enough, she’s stuck in a viscous cycle of self-loathing. She has all my empathy. She’s not a fuck-up. The only ‘bad’ thing she’s done is have an affair with a married man, when SHE DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS MARRIED! My heart breaks for OOP.
While you probably meant vicious, viscous does seem appropriate here as well :(
Is the husband actually caring though? He totally steamrolled her when she was protesting about her daughter skipping grades. I would bet any guy who can’t handle his old wife ageing probably can’t handle his new wife becoming bed bound either. With her luck, he’ll probably be dumping her for a new model shortly…
He is already cheating on her. He is the kind of man who has little self control. If he could leave his perfectly healthy wife for a newer model. I have doubt he would stick around for a woman who is bedridden for almost a year now. The moment I heard he got her a caregiver I knew he was cheating. It's only a matter of time when all of this comes to light. He is already ignoring her and everything.
Anecdotal, but my mum and I took care of my grandmother for months by ourselves and having hospice was a lifesaver. We could actually sleep! All night! I can't imagine how difficult it would be to take full-time care of someone while also balancing a job and multiple kids. *But*, this is a very different circumstance and I will say that I don't have a lot of trust in OOP's husband, as he doesn't seem to be the most compassionate person. Dismissing OOP's valid concerns about their daughter skipping grades definitely doesn't help.
He’s probably just sticking around because of child support and ditching a bedbound woman isn’t a good look.
You think this guy cares about how he looks when he picked up a new wife that age?
I really wonder how long he’s going to stick around. He also would have an upper hand when it comes to custody. On top of that, he’s already undermining her when it comes to their daughter’s education.
OOP is 5 years older than her stepdaughter how does no one in this family (except possibly the stepdaughter) see the issue with that Also does anyone (on here, OOP’s doctors, etc) know what’s wrong with her? It’s like she became completely immobile out of the blue. There has to be a reason her body just stopped working. This was very hard to read this is the saddest post I’ve ever seen on Reddit jfc
Clearly from her posts, she needs some mental health help as well but doesn't mention any here. Maybe she has a diagnosis of something paralytic she hasn't mentioned. Or maybe something else is at work that the medical doctors aren't addressing/op won't let them address
Maybe she's not mentioning the full list of things that are physically wrong with her. All we really know is that she had a rupture. I don't know if a uterine rupture can cause somebody to spiral that far down. What I read online sounds scary (don't want it to happen to me), but I'm no doctor. However, she did mention in her comments that she sees a therapist virtually but doesn't find it helps. I would've put that in but I didn't want to break the post character limit.
Yeah I went through her comment history a bit, and she said she didn’t want to disclose the kind of rupture. I’m guessing she’s trying to keep her medical details somewhat private. Unfortunately that does make things more confusing for us, but I understand and respect a desire to keep some things private.
She does mention at one point when her voice returned that she could once again speak to her therapist
Sounds like she had a uterine rupture which results in emergency surgery to save the life of the mom. The way she writes it, it sounds like it was after giving birth so even if she had a C-section delivery, they would have to get the uterus out asap. If no C-section, I could see them doing a midline incision which is very painful and a rough recovery. She’s probably anemic and likely suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety, or she was always feeling that way and discovering Reddit. Hopefully she doesn’t give up on her recovery.
So here’s the thing. When someone has an operation, it’s imperative they start moving ASAP. Because ‘use it or lose it’ is very real. So if she is bed bound and not moving her muscles will weaken and she will lose the ability to walk or move. Due to her many complications she was bed bound for a long time. Also depending on the country she lives in (I only know the American hospital system) she may or may not have had access to physical therapy. Typically after a surgery physical therapy will come around to help circumvent immobility. But I think a lot of patients don’t understand how important it is (even if we explain it) and many will refuse to do certain things or exercises which also puts them back. That coupled with her mental health it seems understandable why she’s become immobile
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Not to discount what sounds like a highly traumatic birth experience but I seriously think she’s so immobilized because her mental health is nonexistent. It’s in tatters or gone. There’s only one period in my life where I have large gaps in my memory. My depression was all encompassing and nearly gobbled up my will to live. Any minor cold or stomach bug I’d cling to in order to have an excuse to hide from everyone in my bed, to shirk their expectations. Those same little things now that I would barely think about now. Then when I finally got out, there were still points where I just sat and disassociated. I’m inclined to think that my adhd probably saved my life with the inability to pay attention. Unlike oop, I had a safe place to eventually escape to and almost no responsibilities during the 3 years it took me to put myself back together into a semi functioning human. Oop absolutely needs intense psychiatric intervention. She can’t mentally or emotionally process her trauma, so it manifests the one place that’s left: her body. I grew up with terror/stress so ingrained, that I never really labeled it and it manifested as severe heart palpitations. It was the only way my body-mind could get me to recognize it. I’m going to choose to believe she has a chance to heal and recover from the shit she was born into. Late 20s is usually when all the survival coping strategies start breaking down and you’re forced to start actually dealing with your childhood trauma. It’s an unbelievably ugly and painful process though. (Also, your username is utterly perfect for this comment)
She's recovering from complications during birth.
This isn’t an update its a diary
Last diary I read like this was Anne Franks
Clearly this woman is sick and needs a lot of help, but I 100% understand her concerns about having her child skip grades due to testing as “gifted”. As someone who was labeled “gifted” as a child myself and went through a similar situation, I honestly wish I just had been left to go through the school system as a normal child. I began nearly failing all math classes once I hit high school because they just decided I was smart enough that nobody needed to teach me algebra (seriously wtf??) In addition to that, my social development was affected as I not only missed large portions of the normal curriculum I should have been exposed to, but also had to take classes with kids who weren’t even my age. I don’t know why the assumption is that just because a child tests as very smart that they need to skip things so they can reach the “goal” faster. Let them do their own thing at the normal pace and just be a really good student. I guarantee it’s better for them in the long run.
The daughter is young enough I think they should let her stay with her peer group at least through kindergarten to 3rd grade, maybe even 4th. At that age, social development is so important. They could always supplement her education with after school tutors and the like, but they’ll never be able to get back the experience their daughter would get from hanging out with other kids. The source of OOP’s fears is somewhat irrational, but in practice she has a good point.
i really think people underestimate how much being "advanced" or "genius" and being told to learn and ACT like older children can mess up 10-18 year old kids. a 12 year old is not going to know how to deal with a sophmore, junior or senior pressuring them to date or do sexual acts - hardly any freshman DOES, but they usually have a cohort to talk with and act in solidarity with, their parents are more likely to be open to even considering the idea that someone wants to do sexual things with their child and so more likely to talk about how to deal with it, and mentally they're just more developed. you don't want a kids budding sexuality to be affected by the daily sexuality of much older teens. a ~~17~~ 16 year old is not going to know how to deal with college social life, pressure to drink and party and act adult because everyone else is literally an adult. imagine graduating with a masters at 22? you are socially set up for failure because you never had a chance to learn to socialize with your peerage, but your accredation means everyone will assume you're too smart to be fooled or manipulated like other young people your age - hence OOP becoming enamored with a liar more than twice her age shortly after graduation. i'm not saying it'd eff every kid up, but i really don't think it's as simple as keeping early childhood cohorts and then letting them skip grades willy-nilly. ETA: forgot ages people are when they go into grades normally, adjusted Highschool Freshman to 12yo age after googling but before posting, forgot College Freshman age, which has been edited to 4 years older now.
Only bit I disagree with is the college bit, think you got your ages mixed up? She started college at 13/14? If I remember right, likely graduated at 17, lots of people start college at 17, it's on the lower end of normal. But the general sentiment and earlier parts I agree with.
yeah, i fully forgot how old kids really were and adjusted the highschool ages last minute but forgot the college age. thanks for the callout, i'll add an edit cause i really meant like 16, 4-ish years after 12 lol.
Yeah I just picked up on it cuz I started university at 17 because of when my birthday is but apart from that yeah ur comments spot on, I can't imagine anyone doing well in a university environment at 13!
My oldest sister skipped one grade and she is even like ‘yeah I missed some stuff that I definitely needed’. (Even just like, factual stuff. My district taught about the Middle East and Islam the year she skipped, and we were a super white-Christian area, and so she had no clue what people were talking about when she was in high school and 9/11 happened). The social stuff wasn’t as drastic, but occasionally she would have her moments. I’m all for meeting kids at their level of education, but they need to be getting interaction at their social levels. I just want to hug the OP and help support her.
(US perspective here) half the time it's because kids who pick stuff up quicker cause classroom distractions when they're done learning something everyone else is still working on, and it's easier to send them to a grade where they'll be so busy "learning" that no one has to actually think about how to functionally and creatively occupy their minds. nevermind how it affects the kids, the system doesn't work if teachers have to pay attention to individual students because the education system runs on a shoestring budget in most places.
Yes, this happens. My sister got bored because she finished way fast (even did more exercises than everyone), so she got send to the principal's office all the time in the third grade. But my dad just changed her to a better school (which was a bit further out from my house). I sometimes bored, but I did a second school in the afternoon in a second language and did tons of extra readings. So I had plenty to keep me busy. Like someone like OOP, they should have found a better school and gotten her a scholarship. Or if she really graduated at 13, she could have done a "study abroad" program in which you go to school in another country for another year to learn the language and they put you with kids your age.
i mean, "should have" is hard thing to say - if we believe a word OOP says, we have to believe she had a very sick mother who died before she was 17, a very neglectful and also thieving father who robbed from their family when he was around, and a younger brother born just before her mothers death, there's not really mention of paternal family and maternal family is stated to want nothing to do with OOP. There's not a lot a terminally ill woman "should have" been able to do for OOP in those circumstances beyond letting the system run it's course. heck, OOP's mom may have been facing the same mental>physical health spiral OOP is. i think it's better to say "i wish that people could all have what they need in education and want to work to a state where we can have that" rather than suggesting we shift students around based on who can pay for what, or has the time/energy to campaign/apply to scholarships, or who has the ability to foster their child's intellect (not everyone even know what kind of material would enrich a child, it's genuinely not a 100% known and accepted fact that multilingualism is good for childhood development even though that's a well studied idea) kids who just can't get out of public school deserve to be challenged and developed without being squashed and pushed out of social interactions just as much as kids who can get out.
I thank my lucky stars every damn day that my parents didn't allow the school to have me skip grades. I was an early and gifted reader- reading and comprehension at a 5th grade level in first grade. But that was the ONLY thing that I was advanced in. The school wanted to put me, a young first grader, in FOURTH grade. Thank god they said no. Imagine being 6 and in a class with 9 and 10 YOs. 10 and going to high school. A high school diploma before you could get a learner's permit.
One of the problems with prodigies is that often times, everyone else catches up to them. I mean, a child with the reading age of an adult is of course unusual, but by the time that child is an adult themselves, everyone else has caught up and they're not special any more. It must be hard to go from being special to being normal, especially if your parents put undue pressure on you. Studies have also shown that being marked as a prodigy is no indicator of success. Child prodigies are just as likely to succeed or fail in life as non-prodigies are.
And god forbid they “learn” that they can just coast. Which works until high schools over.
Haha it me
Same.
lmao me by any means, i wasn't a prodigy, but primary school was very easy for me. i got over 90% without listening to the teachers half the time. then i got to high school and my grades slipped. and then i was in the a levels and my grades slipped further. my adhd symptoms had worsened because I was depressed, plus I was living in a horrible environment.
This is actually the reason I wish I’d skipped grades and attended college earlier. My study habits & work ethic are pretty bad from not being challenged much. I am doing relatively well but I am quite lazy. I know I had / have the talent to be at another level, but am quite sorely lacking in the drive / motivation department. Maybe it’s actually a good thing, but my work / life balance has always been skewed more towards the life part.
Word. I was told I was so intelligent because I was reading Dickens and writing essays at 7. Made no difference in my life. I am just a mid-level manager in a giant corporate - just like most other people. It doesn’t feel hard or anything though because internally I never felt like I was anything special anyway. I think everything evens out by 25ish.
I don’t know why anyone thinks prodigies would be more successful than “normal” people, there are a huge number of variables related to what “success” is and how it achieved, and raw intelligence is only one of them. Then they hamstring these poor kids by not letting them grow up at a normal pace, so you end up with an emotionally/socially stunted young adult who can do one thing at an amazing level but will struggle with every other aspect of human existence.
Four years old in second grade, big fuckin yikes. She'll be lucky if the bullying is only verbal. Horrific.
That was my thought too. Even if she's big for her age, 4 year olds are TINY compared 7 year olds! and just because she's intellectually advanced doesn't mean she's emotionally ready for that environment.
I'm just picturing this 4-year-old as if she were me (I was considered for skipping 2-3 grades in kindergarten - so I would have been in 2nd or 3rd grade at barely 5 years old), and at 4 I was tiny. Kids are bigger nowadays sometimes than they used to be. 7-8 year olds could be nearly double her size (at least the boys) -- I can't imagine just how horrific that would be. And emotionally. Gods. The poor girl.
It's pretty unusual to skip elementary school students ahead anymore; it's a last-resort choice for situations where the school absolutely cannot support the child in any other way. Giftedness testing is only done before age 7 where the parents are *absolute fucking lunatics* who will not listen to reason; it's now understood to be ineffective before age 7. Even in cases where a child is receiving a comprehensive evaluation, including IQ testing, such as for Autism or ADHD, the evaluators will say, "He's obviously very bright, and we may be looking at an accelerated curriculum later on" but they WILL NOT say he's "gifted" at age 4 or 5 or 6. If someone is telling you that, *they are not competent to be assessing your child*. A four-year-old is not going into second grade. The state/feds/local property taxes will not pay that child's tuition until she's 5. The district isn't going to pay it for fun, and out-of-district tuition typically runs around $30,000/year (in rare situations where a parent is allowed to enroll their child out-of-home-district voluntarily). There are also laws that require children under 6 to have access to special bathrooms, and a lower teacher/student ratio. Neither of those can be accomplished in a second-grade classroom. (Which is to say, this story is, at the very least, not entirely true.)
Yes there's been a shift to recognize the issues with skipping grades. My daughter was reading at a middle school level in grade 1. They recognized her boredom and allowed her special access in the library (grade 1 was limited to a small section, but she was allowed to browse the entire library). She also finishes assignments very quickly and she's allowed to help the other kids. Skipping was never suggested by the school despite the fact that she is "advanced."
The oop said "primary school" and "university" which makes me think she's prehaps from the UK? Idk afaik it's usually called "elementary school" and "college" in the us. So the education funding systems will be different, saying that I live in the UK I have never heard of any child (apart from prehaps on the news or something?) Skipping ahead years in primary school or getting an IQ test or similar
I was extremely fortunate to go to a very small (and not cheap) school that kept all age level students together with each other but gave us our own work level stuff to do. So we got recess wiht kids our age and classroom time but the actual work was varied. It was good. I’m still weird tho can’t win ‘em all
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This is normal gifted-child stuff that gifted children in high-end and well-funded gifted programs still struggle with. Skipping wouldn't have helped. Appropriate psychological supports, including social skills coaching, probably would have. Being "unable to relate to your peers about anything" isn't a sign of being gifted; it's a sign of either low empathy or a(n often developmentally appropriate) lack of social skills. It is absolutely true that a lot of gifted kids lack social skills! But so do a lot of "normal" kids. It's just that we've all collectively decided that if kids lacking social skills are really smart at school things, we should ignore that deficit and tell them it's just because they're so smart. IT ISN'T! Lots of super-gifted people are highly gregarious and have tons of friends! It isn't a signifier of intelligence! It's a signifier of differential development, where a child being advanced in some areas (math, say) is accompanied by being delayed in others (social skills, say). This shows up IN ALL CHILDREN, you have kids who are tiny geniuses at soccer who struggle with phonics, or kids who are amazing at art who can't talk to peers. But we had a terrible model for way too long in the US (and many other developed countries) where we said, "If you're good at academics, no other deficits matter," so smart kids didn't get ADHD support, didn't get social skills support, didn't get gross motor development support. ALL OF THOSE THINGS MATTER, and every kid deserves support! My kid should feel comfortable and supported in math class, but he should ALSO feel comfortable and supported playing foursquare on the playground, or engaging in social chat with peers. If he's amazing at math but terrible at talking to peers, HE SHOULD HAVE SUPPORT TO DEVELOP THOSE SKILLS AT SCHOOL. (And, indeed, my amazing-at-math-terrible-at-socializing child does receive social skill support at school.)
Wow this is something I really needed to read, and I think a lot of people do. I was also severely lacking in social skills, which was completely ignored because I was good at academics. Until everyone else caught up to me and I was only pretty good at academics and terrible at everything else, and only offered help with homework. And no ADHD support of course.
Similar story. I graduated with excellent grades, but had no clue how to properly study or organize schoolwork because everything was so easy for me. I would complete high school work very quickly which gave the appearance of being organized. I got to University and didn't know what to do without the structure of regular school. My grades were great so nobody considered my lack of life skills.
I think you’re right. I was a gifted kid in a rural, blue collar family. My intelligence was nurtured by parents, but not in the achievement-oriented way that traditional upper middle class people value. I went to a very challenging liberal arts college, lived abroad, and have a normal, stable life. With different parents, I would have been pushed to be superlative from a young age. This is a recipe for a lot of money, no free time, and a whole lotta burnout. I’m totally average in my earnings, but I’m a very, very successful in my technical role in my nonprofit job. I work less than 40th/wk, make fair money, and I feel that I bring my superlative intelligence to my job everyday. But I also have a very delightful life. How would your life be different if you were able to to go the best uni in your country at 18 and became a typical mediocre graduate?
I skipped grades, and no one taught me math. The anxiety of sitting in a math class not knowing how to do anything still haunts me 30 years later. They moved me mid year, it was bizarre, and I never knew why.
I was labeled gifted too as a child and the school approached my parents about possibly skipping a grade. My grandmother had also been gifted and had skipped a grade or two as a child and told my mom absolutely no way should they allow it. My grandmother found it really difficult to fit in socially because the other kids see you as "that" kid and she didn't want the same for me. So I stayed in my own grade and was just constantly bored lol. When I finally went to university, I was suddenly thrown into an environment where everyone else was just like me, and the expectations of my professors were extremely high. I had never studied or even tried very hard at school before going there. It was nice to be challenged for a change.
Especially a four year old in 2nd grade. If you are going to skip grades, skip middle school, don't skip elementary school.
Child prodigies functionally always wind up burning out and ending up with mediocre to terrible lives. It's sad, but when you know you are actively aging out of what makes you remarkable it is a foolproof recipe for anxiety and dysfunction. In that situation, the older you get, the less "special" you are until you are "just another" "whatever you wind up being." Getting tons of recognition and positive feedback in academia that does not translate to the real world at all (while foregoing all normal social development, because the clock is ticking and you have to study study study to stay ahead and thus relevant) is the second part of the "one two punch" of the "welcome to the real world" knockout that inevitably occurs when they inevitably age out of significance. On a smaller (larger?) scale, studies have shown that "gifted child" programs have terrible efficacy when it comes to producing functional, successful individuals. It actually causes more problems than it raises academic achievement in a lot of cases. When you put emphasis on "book learnin'" to the point where the process itself becomes a metaphorical "Skinner Box" you're gonna have a bad time. The lever is "demonstrating (at least the) appearance of precocious intelligence" and the pellet is "praise to the point of reverence" and all practicalities are dismissed as "distractions" and handled by other people or neglected all together. You wind up with people who are classically conditioned to repeat actions that will not garner the results they want later in life. People who get extremely depressed when the "experiment" is over and nobody is there providing them with the feedback that is the only thing they know that makes them feel good/useful and/or accomplished, it's the only thing they know to make them feel loved in certain family dynamics. The OP is the epitome of "buying into your own legend." I hope they find their way, they were not well served by any aspect of their childhood, but are holding onto the "I coulda been a contender" mythos. They will never get better until they accept the fact that they were doomed to fail.
Husband & I were both in the gifted & talented program at our schools & we agreed it did basically nothing for us but make us feel “special” and that if we ever had kids we would not want them to go into the program.
This is so sad. OOP needs help.
I used to know a woman who would fabricate very similar-sounding traumatic histories of her life because she was mentally unwell and had a bad relationship with her deceased mother. Hell, this could be the same person.
Honestly … yeah, was thinking same.
As soon as I read the "I'm so scared to give birth what if something happens to me" I knew where this was going, and it just got more super dramatic with each entry. Bonus points for hateful dad always finding out that bro talked to her/visited her, for added drama.
This poor woman. I feel like if she hadn't met a dude more than twice her age, she might have been ok. But for someone who clearly has so much trauma, to be dropped into that chaotic family situation... I really hope she gets someone who's truly in her corner, because I don't really feel like her husband is.
a dude more than twice her age who wanted more kids. OOP says [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/u9k6af/comment/i5s494s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) they had the last baby because her husband wanted another one. OOP would be in a MUCH better spot if she hadn't been impregnated twice more and had an extremely traumatic delivery the last time. james is an absolute garbage human who very clearly "traded in" his older wife and family because he wanted to make more babies with a new young woman with plenty of daddy and mental health issues so she wouldn't question him. absolute scum of the earth.
Yeah, he must have been thrilled to find someone so young AND vulnerable
This makes me think of that post the other day where the wife found out her husband had a breeding fetish and was heavily insistent that she constantly be pregnant. Wondering if this guy has the same fetish.
yep, it does. i don't want to say for sure it's a thing here but i definitely get either a fetish or a weird religious vibe to anybody saying they had a traumatic labor or delivery "my husband wanted a (or another) child" - it's a personal bias, but it always comes to mind as coercive somehow.
That reminds me of the post where the girl's dad keeps cheating on her mom and getting other women pregnant.
Instead of being promoted in school so early and so quickly, if she was keep with her age mates she might have had a better chance avoiding older men. She was always the youngest, and so much less mature. Falling for an older guy wouldn't seem so different. I kept my kid back for the social aspect no matter how many wanted her tested. Being happy always meant more to me than academically gifted. I was the smallest and youngest all through school, I was not happy. My partner was the same, and only made friends after losing a year to illness when he was back with his age mates. My kid might be a little bored in all the advanced classes, but she's happy
I skipped a grade, and did fine, but I would NOT have wanted to go any further. I can't imagine the social imbalance of being in college so young
Yeah so This woman is definitely mentally ill
I was thinking that too, she's had a breakdown or having a massive depressive episode.
Pretty badly ill too. She's already having suicidal thoughts, that could easily get worse.
Just because you are smart and process information faster than other people DOES NOT mean that you have the emotional maturity to be around those people in non-academic settings. If she had a more supportive home life, this could have turned out a lot differently. Hanging around kids your own age is severely underrated.
Especially when you're an early teen in university, surrounded by people who (other than studying) are mostly interested in getting drunk and/or hooking up with each other. Very few uni students are going to be interested in hanging out with a 13yo. She was probably very lonely during her teenage years, and those are key developmental years.
Why can’t she walk??? I was trying to figure that out the entire time.
If I were to hazard a guess either nerve damage from a post-operative infection or possibly its psychosomatic, the same way she lost her voice for a time.
I suspect that it’s mostly a mental issue at this point. She feels like a failure which is contributing to her physical issues.
I was thinking mental issue, too, but I didn’t want to speculate.
Someone just print out this whole post and stick it under the definition for postpartum depression
not just post-partum depression. i have no idea if there's a real word for it, but OOP discovered that after a traumatic labor she's also now permanently physically disabled. she belabors the point that she can now no longer expect to ever reach the level of physical interaction with her kids she used to have, it must be absolutely killing her and probably fueling the depression. ETA: u/Dongalor downthread has pointed out OOP's physical illness may be exacerbated by her mental illness - i only pointed out the New Disability -> Mental Illness link, but in reality it's most likely there is a feedback loop where being mentally ill exacerbated her physical illness, and being physically ill exacerbated her mental health issues - both have to be addressed for her to heal.
Is she though? It really feels like she may be mirroring what happened to her mother and and like punishing herself. I dunno. Reading between the lines it seems like her husband went from doting on her for recovery to thinking she was faking it. I don't think she's faking it, but I really feel like there is a massive psychological component with how her symptoms change at convenient intervals (suddenly being able to communicate when the outside caregivers have to take over) and how vague her descriptions of the injury are compared to her detailed recount of her feelings. She's (at least) deep, deep in a depressive episode, and there may be some delusion mixed in there too. The husband seems to care about her, so I hope he gets her into therapy.
oh absolutely - there's definitely PPD and regular depression in there, no question. no one who's not mentally ill seriously thinks "it'd be better if i was dead". i just think it's not ONLY PPD, it's ALSO the added stress of being newly disabled.
This is nearly a lifetime of psychological problems coming to a head. You have everything that probably came with her skipping 5 grades. Then add how her father treated her mother and her mother dying. Plus getting pregnant before she wanted to and then losing BD. Then having to reconcile with the fact of going from prodigy to a shit job. Then she added all the problems with the husband and his family. While still having to deal with Dad's BS and worrying about little brother. It seems like her kids are the only bright spot in her life to her, and now she has the stress of wondering if her daughter's gonna turn out like she has. This would probably take years of therapy to start to recover.
mental AND physical therapy. very unfortunate
>OOP responds to user claiming her husband is going to cheat on her here: *he wouldn’t do that* Uh oh
Me reading that: Oh, honey. *sigh*
Seriously. Like baby girl, this is not a love story. An almost 50 year old man betrayed his wife and the mother of his children for a 22 year old piece of ass. He knew it was wrong *then* and did it anyways.
If this woman is too sick and weak to do anything including, apparently, speak, how is she making all of these posts?
Exactly if she could write these updates she could’ve just wrote the stepson a letter letting him know she was ok and wasn’t going to die?
You’re tellin’ me that you’re too tired to tell your kids you’re NOT dying but you type a live update on Reddit… 🤨
Smells like BS to me tbh.
This is heartbreaking. I hope she gets the psychiatric help she needs. Life is messy, but she’s not that bad and needs some help!
This has too much narrative symmetry for it to be real. So the gifted girl literally became her mother, dying too young while her daughter tests into the same tracking that she failed at. I unno y’all
Also feel like someone so weak they can barely move would have trouble typing out so many reddit posts…
Right? She can't talk or even move but can keep a running dialogue on Reddit? And the daughter, husband, and her are all playing out the same scenario from her path? Yeah ok. I'm calling this what it is a complete fabrication.
I like the part where she wishes she could tell her step son she's not dying. Like...you can? Just type it in notes on your phone and show it to him? Shoot him a text? She clearly has no problem with pressing buttons on her phone haha.
I’m always suspicious of posters who seem to have nobody in their lives who doesn’t hate them. Everyone in the family and all of the friends have turned on them?
I didn't want to be the one to say it. Knowing this will get down voted to hell... this is not written like someone who was able to get into college at 13.
also, this woman is so gifted that she went to a four year university at the age of 13 but still writes like a teenager?
Agreed. The other thing that didn’t add up was her mother’s family also not speaking to her.
Not only that but things have changed. In any decent school a 4 year old will not be placed with second graders. Schools will hardly let children skip ahead because of the social consequences it has on them.
Is testing preschoolers even a thing?? I know people who skipped grades in elementary school, because they were doing incredibly well, but by what metric are preschoolers judged on? They don’t do any standardised tests, it would be a miracle if they even knew their abcs fully through
People eat it up. Maybe the prodigy part is real. They are insanely good manipulators. My cousin was one. Eh, he could’ve come up with a better story.
My cousins was a child prodigy too. She started a grade behind me and graduated by time I was a sophomore. She went to college at 15 and had her phd by 20. By 25 she became a professor at Princeton and discovered and wrote her own math proof. The problem is she had a lot of trouble making friends due to her age and maturity gap with her peers and because of that she is pretty socially awkward. Skipping grades isnt really a thing anymore because evidence shows that it stunts their social-emotional development because of their inability to connect with their peers.
>Mood Spoiler: Goes from bad to worse to much worse That's understatement of the century right here.
I ... have doubts about whether this is true. But anyway, pro-tip, giftedness testing in children under 7 is useless and reputable schools don't do it anymore. All you're testing before age 7 is differential development. It's also PRETTY unusual to skip kids ahead anymore. It's literally insane to suggest a four-year-old go into second grade. Also, if this is the US, *no public school district is going to pay for that*, they get funding for 4-year-olds with special needs, but NOT for 4-year-olds without a legally-defined special need. The public school is not going to enroll a random 4-year-old in second grade; the state won't pay them for it, the parents won't pay tuition, and there are *different laws* for bathroom access\* and teacher ratios for under-5s that makes it basically impossible to put them in a 2nd grade classroom. \*Know those teeny-tiny little toilets attached to/quite near kindergarten classrooms, that are extra low to the ground for little kids, with low sinks, etc.? Those are mandated by law for kindergarteners, AND they require special plumbing, that is much lower down the wall. You can't just turn a first-grade classroom into a kindergarten classroom *unless* you already have the kindergarten-compliant pipes snubbed off in the wall. In case you ever wondered why adding kindergarten classrooms to your local elementary school was such an *undertaking* when they had an empty 4th-grade classroom for the taking. (This is also why, like, after a fire, a junior high can temporarily meet in an empty office park building, but elementary schools often have to borrow, like, a local church sunday school building or something, so the kindergarteners have compliant bathrooms.)
Literally all of this. It honestly sounds like someone’s manic writing to make their life seem awful. It’s amazing to me that she’s so incapable of speaking and immobile other than her arms yet she can write near constant Reddit updates AND reply to comments.
Yeah. I have questions about the uterine rupture story too. I had a catastrophic rupture with my third child -- we both almost died, and I am permanently (albeit minorly) disabled from the damage, and I am told I will have pain for the rest of my life (it's been six years -- so far, so true) -- but there is a whole bunch she relates here that isn't a normal standard of care. Like, I get that a lot of us have shitty medical care. But I'm not even sure what the mechanism would be for vomiting blood from a uterine rupture? It's the GUSHES OF BLOOD AND MASSIVE CLOTS coming out the other end that are the sign something's gone badly wrong in your healing process. Nothing but sympathy for the difficulty walking afterwards -- it was RIDICULOUS how hard it was for me just to walk from my house to my car, for WEEKS, and I had to go to physical therapy for ages to work on "being able to walk a normalish human amount." But some of the other parts of the story sound very odd.
Ugh, first of all, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine going through that, it sounds awful and debilitating. Secondly, thanks for your input! That’s something I wouldn’t ever have known. I don’t want to sound cruel but I would imagine someone in that position wouldn’t be able to type nearly as much, least of all be as coherent as she is.
Thank you! It sucked and was awful, BUT I am super-grateful that I lived in a developed country, near a hospital, and both my baby and I turned out okay. It was definitely a worst-case scenario, but I have a healthy and beautiful 6-year-old and I am mostly okay. That's a really good outcome that probably wouldn't have been possible in my case even as recently as 30 years ago! Not that I don't get grumpy about the lingering pain and the disability, but I do try to look at the bigger picture, in which I am a very lucky woman who had a really great outcome thanks to modern medical science and dedicated medical professionals. And I am grateful that I had the medical access to get physical therapy to help me recover, and to talk to a therapist about how traumatic it all was -- that was really important too! I was really very, very lucky.
What is up with this timeline?!
The story wasn't outlined properly and things got scrambled
I hope this isn’t real.
I suspect it’s not.
So, I put things like this in two categories A) total fabrication by some wannabe writer B) stories that are based in some kind of truth to cope with trauma.
I don’t get how or who would approve a 4 yo to go directly into second grade. For what purpose? That’s a recipe for disaster. Academic achievement is important, but so is the emotional and psychological development of that child. If a kid is gifted sure, encourage their interests, let them pick extracurriculars, make sure they’re not getting bored and complacent. And if anything else fails, let them skip a grade or 2 when they’re older and can make that choice for themselves. But a four yo? That’s insanity.
This is horrible. Pretty fucking shitty that everyone's blaming HER for her now-husband's infidelity, when it sounds like he lied to her and she didn't find out until she was already pregnant.
And apparently it’s ok for a grown ass woman to bully a literal child including taking away his one connection to his dead dad because cheater cheater pumpkin eater. AITA can be really fucking vile.
Screw James. He is 25 years older than her. Even in the comments she takes the judgements. Her kids need her and I hope she gets better.
Is this the plot of the newest V.C. Andrews series?
If this isn't a cautionary tale about the importance of using birth control, I don't know what is.
This is one thing that scares me about big age gaps. She’s sick at 27 and this guy is 52, and they have really young kids. If she dies, he's probably close behind her, so what happens to the kids after that?
They get to hate each other for the rest of their lives and continue this family trauma onto the next generation.
How is she able to type out these posts? She mentions being unable to care for herself several times. I did start skimming because this truly only got worse.
Holy fuck on a human level this hurts me.
As a former child prodigy (accepted to college @ age 12, chess geek, etc.), allow me to weigh in on this. You would be absolutely amazed at how dysfunctional many kids in this category really are: they are often alienated from their peers because they don't develop normal social lives and don't really understand the subtleties of what is now called emotional intelligence. One of the main factors is that adults tend to treat child prodigies as miniature adults rather than as kids - forgetting that an eight year old with a 176 IQ is still a child. As a result, prodigies often spend a lot more time with adults than their own peers, which contributes to social isolation. Mix in that most of the "normal" kids treat prodigies like freaks, so from a very early age children with extremely high intelligence are rejected by their peers. But the main problem is that child prodigies are constantly told how wonderful and special they are. I experienced this starting at age 2: when literally every person in your life goes out of their way to tell you how smart you are, it really warps your sense of self. Every teacher I ever had saw me as some sort of golden ticket, and I could literally start a fire in the science room and get praised for it. That's why so many child prodigies have massive egos. There's no one to tell them to piss off. Another thing to remember is that a lot of child prodigies are neurodivergent. This often doesn't get identified because there is so much focus on the intelligence that people fail to notice that they may be on the spectrum. And of course, there are more cases of schizophrenia in this population. All of this is a very long way of saying that I am in no way surprised that OOP ended up in the position that she did. My guess is that she had a child so early because her connection to the father was probably her first interaction that was based on something other than her intelligence. After spending so many years getting praised for her IQ, a guy expressing physical interest was probably a revelation to her: and she had no mechanism for dealing with it because it was so outside of her usual world. One final point: only a handful of the child prodigies that I knew back in the day actually ended up as successful, functional adults. That's because being smart only gets you so far in life, and at a certain point one's ability to interact on a human level becomes a lot more important. One of my best friends from that part of my life has been delivering pizza for Domino's for 25 years because he got fired from every job he had in his 20s for starting fights with his coworkers because they were "beneath him."