When the school offered her a chance to leap ahead, to embrace a path tailored for her extraordinary talents, her mother’s heart chose a different course—one that placed sisterly love above opportunity. In that decision lay a poignant struggle between nurturing exceptional gifts and preserving the delicate threads of family unity.
I (f17) was one of those gifted kids when I was younger. I taught myself how to read when I was 2.5 and how to add when I was 3 and by the time I went to kindergarten I was reading chapter books and doing second grade math.
My sister (18) has adhd and dyslexia and was always a little behind in reading and math.
Now to the story. My district makes us do placement tests whenever we start kindergarten and right before the school year started, the principal and my kindergarten teacher called my parents into a meeting.
They basically said I was very advanced for my age and wanted me to skip kindergarten and go to first grade. My mom refused because she thought my sisters feelings would be hurt because I skipped a grade and she didn’t.
They said ok and suggested I be put in the gifted program and go to a different elementary school in the district (like 2 miles away) that has advanced classes and extra support for gifted kids.
She rejected that too because she also thought it would hurt my sisters feelings. They also suggested a private elementary school 10 minutes away for gifted kids. She said no for the same reason as before.
They told my mom that they wouldn’t be able to give me much support if I’m at a regular kindergarten class at their school and she said ok. My dad wanted me to go to the private school and argued with my mom about it for weeks.
He eventually gave up when she threatened to divorce him for not considering my older sister.
Fast forward to 8th grade, I’m still very advanced and my dad comes home with pamphlets for this special high school for gifted kids. My mom shut it down immediately. They argued more and he gave in again when the threat of divorce came up again.
Now, my parents actually are getting divorced and I chose to live with my dad full time. My mom got mad and asked what she did to have me leave her too and I gave a whole list of reasons (mostly her favoring my sister) and ended it with her holding me back in school to protect my sister’s feelings.
She argued that she did what was best for both of us and I’m an asshole for holding that against her because now I have great friends at my school.
I left and went to pack my stuff so I wanted to know if I was an asshole.
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) feels that their mother actively limited their educational opportunities from a young age to protect the feelings and relative standing of their older sister, who has learning disabilities. The central conflict is between the OP’s right to academic challenge and the mother’s perceived need to maintain emotional equality and prevent sibling rivalry, even at the cost of the OP’s potential.
Was the mother justified in sacrificing the OP’s advanced educational track to prioritize the sister’s emotional comfort and perceived need for parity, or did this action constitute an unfair suppression of the OP’s potential? Is the OP justified in viewing this past decision as a major reason for their current estrangement from their mother?
Here’s how people reacted:
ETA: I am a mom of three highly gifted children – as in qualify for special schooling. One started talking at 6 months. Middle went into kindergarten fighting eldest for the college level reading material. The baby can do math I need a calculator to check (I’m an engineer) in his head in 1st grade. They are fun smart little people and I love them. BUT. Being highly gifted has a lot of management needs from parents. Kids have to be taught *how* to fail and that that is ok because when they are little everything is soooo easy. Taught study skills. Taught not be arrogant. To listen to the teacher because in a normal classroom the teacher rarely says anything they don’t know. Many gifted kids have intense perfectionism that has to be careful Lyrica managed so it doesn’t become crippling anxiety and self doubt the first time something is a little hard. They have to be taught that other people might not know the things they know but that there are other kinds of intelligence that are just as important. These are things special schools help with. Not just accelerating learning so that no one is bored but letting gifted kids not always be the smartest person in the room. Normalizing not always getting a perfect grade (even through 5th grade, other kids in eldest’s class would have full on tantrums on the floor because they got 95/100 on a test) and how to handle those emotions. It is very much a special need, just not one that drags down a district’s test scores (since someone mentioned it in the comments – this is what the district told us was why above grade level kids didn’t have additional work – because they don’t effect the test scores – we are in the US).
ETA – Thanks for the awards! I’m sorry so many have had similar experiences and hope we can channel our knowledge to improve opportunities for the next set of kids!
Both my brother and I were exactly like you. Gifted program, learned to read at 2, advanced math. I was reading college level in second grade. I was invited to take the placement test by a teacher, my principal was a really racist woman who wanted to hold back all minority gifted kids, she removed 12 of us from the testing list. She didn’t send study materials home with me and didn’t send a letter to my parents about the test. She also held us out of the testing room. My dad is a lawyer who sued the school and they fired the principal. I skipped three grades and my younger brother is borderline genius who received the same treatment. I’ll never understand adults who are meant to want the best for you, but somehow betray you in such a monumental way. Ultimately, no one can hold you back from the success you were meant to acheive. Not your mother, not teachers, not your sister. You will succeed in this timeline regardless. I hope that brings you solace.
Note- I am not a mental health professional and I am not diagnosing your mother. Her behavior simply reminds me of other parents I’ve seen. This is purely my opinion and should not be taken as fact.
I am going to be devil’s advocate and wonder if you have some recollection bias, since you were so young at the time.
For one: not wanting you to skip grades is valid, the social aspect would have been detrimental, especially with a sibling in the grade above. That absolutely would have harmed you.
The schools thing: having your kids in two separate schools is an absolute logistical nightmare. Just, migraine-inducing, tangle mess horrible. The school should have transferred BOTH of you to the other public school with better resources. I find it bizarre that they didn’t offer that. Public school in the US is also required to accommodate you, so refusing and saying your parents should send you to the (expensive!) private school is also odd, unless you’re in a very low income area, with bad schools in general. Why didn’t your school offer gifted classes, or send you to the other one for part days? If they wouldn’t send your sister with you to the other public school, and the private one was out of your price range for both of you or wouldn’t accept your sister, then yes, I can see a parent deciding that both children need to stay in the old one.
Your parents in the 8th grade: again, expensive private school, along with logistical nightmare to get you there. I would lean towards money being more of the reason for the arguments.
Treating children equally is also a fairly difficult line to walk, and the majority of reddit letters arise from disparate treatment. It’s not such a simple thing to give one child significantly more resources. Think of the life long issues that can arise from doing so.
I’m mainly trying to convey that these decisions were far more complicated and nuanced than “she likes my sister better”
This had nothing to do with your sister’s feelings. You were five, she was six. Neither of you had much of an idea of what “gifted” is or what the different options meant. Your mother is AH for blaming her choices on your “sister’s feelings.”
The only thing she might have cared about, eventually, is if the two of you wound up in the same grade. That would be very obvious to the peers in your class that you’d been moved ahead and she hadn’t, and both of you might have been in an awkward situation sharing a classroom. How would it look if you both complete, say, the same science project display, and yours showed your greater academic skill?
And skipping a grade often isn’t a good idea, even if a child is academically gifted, because there are other forms of maturity that happens as a child grows, and a child rarely has maturity across all aspects of the way children grow. For example, you would have been smaller than the other children in the class if allowed to skip a year, and would have been at a disadvantage in things like physical education, trying to keep up with kids who have had an extra year to grow bigger and stronger.
But keeping you from simply attending a different school? That’s nuts. You would have been with kids your own age, and neither you nor your sister would necessarily have been aware of why you were in different schools for several years.
Edit to add: my ADULT (almost 40) sister now believes to this day that if she’s upset about something happening in the family, even if she’s in the wrong (feel free to see the post about her moving most of my possessions into a rat infested basement because she didn’t like them being in an otherwise unused closet), that it’s her way or the highway. So she never learned how to cope either. Your mom is hurting both you and your sister- there are some important life lessons here..!
>I think I might be the asshole because I probably don’t know the whole story so I shouldn’t have told her I resent her for it
I agree with you here. “Hurting sisters feelings” is something that you tell your 4 year old because the real adult answer is hugely complicated. The decision to not send you to gifted schools could have been related to:
* her relationship with your father. (who would also have had a say in the school choice, btw)
* money
* your maturity as a child (gifted kids can be super immature in other ways).
I think that maybe YTA, if only because you don’t have the full picture. Have a proper chat to your mother, and see what the go is.
Former gifted kid here, it’s not all it’s cracked out to be and adds a lot of pressure to your life. I don’t think your mom is wrong to not put you in these programs, but I can see why you would be upset about it as well. Also, it turns out that a lot of us former gifted kids had undiagnosed ADHD and never got adequate treatment due to the fact that we did well in school.
Is being in a gifted program worth your relationship with your mom, sister, and other school friends? Is being seen as the smarter than everyone important to you? If you live in any reasonably sized city there are probably a ton of activities you can partake in outside of the school system that will give you the mental challenge you want.
Hope you get into a great university and never look back.
Your Mom is playing favorites to protect her daughters feelings at the cost of a better education. And also threatening divorce during an argument is very shitty.
Your mom is definitely the T A.
But your mom is still TA, because she kept you back out of jealousy. But I swear you haven’t lost out on a life of excellence because of it.
Bovine excrement. If the only option was skip a grade or not, she might have a bit of an argument. But you could have gone to 2 different schools for advanced children. Either one of those would have been best for you, and you likely would have made just as many great friends there as regular public school. NTA.
Your mom truly did try to stifle you, and I hope that you don’t have to experience that now
Your mom didn’t want you to get ahead academically because it would hurt your sister’s feelings? WTF