He's Not Lazy: Empowering Your Son to Believe In Himself

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Boys may seem like they're impervious to school pressures and demands, but in fact they often fear failure so much that they simply opt out of academic competition altogether. This book is a huge ray of hope for me, there's a saying that goes: "it takes a village to raise a child" however, to raise a teenager it surely takes more than just a village. Remind him he controls his future, and it’s up to him to get engaged, and tackle his worries, but you will be there to help and support him. There are some really wonderful and wonderfully presented strategies that I will use with students and likely the 16yo in my house.

Rather than reacting to pressure by shunning academic responsibilities altogether or propping up fear-based rebellion with justifications like “I am not going to be one of those nerds who have no life,” or “Tests don’t measure intelligence or help you learn, so what’s the point of studying for them? He contradicts almost everything he says in the book and he wastes tons of pages assuming you’re some kind of helicopter parent.They are struggling silently, in a world that is too competitive, surrounded by a perfectionistic culture, and because their brains develop later and differently from girls’ brains (and the school system is biased towards a learning style that suits girls more than boys in general- encouraged by sitting in rows, teacher led learning), the boys feel overwhelmed.

There were several things I didn’t agree with due to the authors views which didn’t align with my (biblical) worldview; however, there was enough practical insight that I still found this book helpful in understanding the valid, underlying reasons that cause adolescent boys to appear lazy or become unmotivated.

It’s a lot of nice thoughts but my child is failing out of high school and letting him isn’t really an option. Full of easy-to-understand explanations of scientific and developmental information that is absolutely necessary to understand, the second half of the book offers some really practical ideas and applications. This perceived laziness is if you like the other end of the spectrum reaction of the hypercompetitive society we live in, with Perfectionism at one end and ‘Opting Out’ at the other.