What is it like to be a child prodigy? Is it worth the label of "prodigy"?

What is it like to be a child prodigy? Is it worth the label of "prodigy"? 

How does it feel to be a child prodigy, or grow up as one?

Growing up as a child prodigy was probably detrimental to me, for the following reasons:

I was always in special classes. When I was five I was already doing algebra, so my teachers had me sit behind the counter and work independently while the others were learning to add. When I was eight my parents sent me to the eighth grade, where I worked alongside people twice my height. I saw nothing wrong with this at the time, but in retrospect I probably would have benefited from fitting in.

Between the newspaper articles, the special classes, and my parents emphasizing academic achievement to the exclusion of everything else, I ended up seeing myself as a genius. This is how I would introduce myself to other students. I can't be sure of why I had no school friends until college, but that probably had a lot to do with it.

I looked down on everyone else. Other people were "normal," and normal people were dumb. This continued all through high school, although in middle school I stopped thinking it was important to be smarter than everyone else, so I compared myself to people less and less.

Academics were basically my entire life. Most of my fun activities were science museums, bookstores, and educational computer games. Regular computer games and non-educational television were guilty pleasures and synonymous with "goofing up." When I started using the Internet heavily (in eighth grade) my parents tried to ban it because they wanted me to read an AP Bio textbook to prepare for a summer program. During lunch hours or social events, I'd bring work to do instead of talking to people. I didn't think this was so unusual, because even though other people had different upbringings, they were just "normal people" and they weren't supposed to save the world like I was. 

The upsides of being a child prodigy:

I never had issues with self-esteem. Most people didn't like me, but I was smart so it didn't matter. I also never worried about my appearance or anything else because the only thing that mattered was my intelligence, and I had plenty of that. In high school I showered about once a week, and in general I was never afraid to raise my hand or correct teachers. In retrospect, that might have been a bad thing.

I never really got exposed to "bad influences." I wasn't popular enough to know people who did drugs or got bad grades. I left high school with most of the same values as my parents, and although that wasn't ideal, it did keep me out of a lot of trouble. Also, since I was mostly isolated from the social scene, I never experienced the worst of the bullying that I hear goes on in most schools. People were mean, but not enough for me to remember it.

All in all, the whole "prodigy" thing was probably bad for me, but now I'm happy so it doesn't really matter.