How to Help Your Son Fight These Three Dangerous Lies

1. “I’m stupid.”  

They may not say it out loud, but this thought is very common among boys. There’s a sneaky reason that boys are far more likely than girls to drop out of high school and avoid college today: without ever intending to, our educational system disproportionately discourages boys.

Boys are much less likely to thrive in today’s “sit still and listen” school environment, in part because boy brains often need movement to learn.  So when wiggly little boys are required by well-intentioned (and mostly female) teachers to sit still, their brains often have a bit more difficulty grasping and retaining information.  Not surprisingly, since they miss things, they then often begin to feel stupid.  And a boy who feels stupid is less likely to continue to try, year after year.  He’s far more likely to let go of the academics that cause that painful feeling, and embrace areas he feels competent or special (sports, video games, being the class clown…).

Yet that process can be stopped and reversed at any point by a determined parent. When I was doing the For Parents Only research and talking to hundreds of teenage boys, I heard story after story of boys whose parents confronted that toxic “I’m stupid” belief early and often.  When parents emphasized ways they knew their sons were smart, the boys began to believe those things for themselves. (Dr. Kathy Koch’s excellent book 8 Great Smarts equips parents with ways to do that.)