My first thoughts on reading the post title were “how sad”.
Reminds me of a relative who had a kid at 14. IMHO, you lose part of your childhood if you start things too early.
I taught a 16 year old in advanced classes, who graduated college at 18. She wanted to go to medical school, but ended up getting married, getting a master’s then a PhD and now she is teaching college too. She has a few kids and is living a “normal life”. She is wistful about missing out on her teenage years in a normal way. Very nice, very sheltered.
My youngest is very talented in math and science, and we are thinking of pushing her ahead in math, but also wonder what the point would be. Colleges look at students taking the most difficult courses available at the school, and she could do that without an issue and without outside classes.
My second thoughts are similar to what I feel when reading about certain athletes. That the parents drop everything for their one child, or one of their children. We aren’t about to move to Lowell to be close to MIT. We aren’t about to hyperfocus on one child over another, or one child over our careers. When my son could have joined a top five club sport team in the country, a team that did national and international tournaments, we decided together with him that commuting 75 minutes each way on a low traffic day, and 2 hours or more each way on a bad day was too much for our family. So it’s “his loss” that we didn’t commit 100% to his athletic career.
One of the national soccer team stars many people respect had his mom driving him six hours each way to soccer practice. The average family just can’t do that. The open courseware was only a small part of the OP story.