When you have a little boy, the cultural dreams are clear: athletic success. Dads dream about teaching their kids to play sports. Moms imagine taking them to Little League games, the whole family together to cheer them on. Some people even dream of their kid becoming a pro athlete. And sure, I had those thoughts, too. After all they’re engrained in us from a cultural perspective. But no one dreams about having a kid who is a major nerd.
And that’s my kid. I am raising a nerd in a jock-obsessed world.
To be clear, right off the bat, I want to be sure that this is not something I see as a bad thing. I love that my son is a nerd. He loves to read, including books that are way beyond his age. He’s still in elementary school, but he’s reading — and loving! — Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. And speaking of Jurassic Park, he is passionate about dinosaurs and animals. He’s so knowledgeable about them, and loves learning everything he can about paleontology and zoology. Like most kids, he loves superhero movies, but he also is reading the classic comics. He’s read the first 50 or so of the original Spiderman comics. He is the kid in school that follows the rules, and gets upset when other kids don’t listen to a teacher. He loves science and computers and drones. He’s a nerd, and I love that!
But he is getting older. He’s pushing middle school. And he’s starting to see that this is not a world set up for kids like him.
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I remember the first time he came home and had come to some realization that he was a nerd — not the popular kid, not the jock. It was around the last year or so. He likes sports, likes playing them and thinks they’re fun, but he’s not as good as other boys. He’s shorter, slower, and doesn’t tend to win often, is the complaint I heard a lot. And he was so upset, because he was starting to struggle to make friends.
He isn’t good at sports, he told me. And people only want to be friends with kids who are good at sports.
Oh, how that broke my heart. And I don’t doubt it. He’s reaching that tween age, and already, I can see at school the “popular” kids he’s comparing himself to. They’re all athletic, confident, and hey, good for them! But I hate that someone like my son doesn’t have anyone cheering him on when, say, he wins the science fair or is in the top 15 spellers in the entire school district. People love athletes. They don’t care as much about nerds.
Now sure, that will change when he gets older. We all know that classic story: popular kids graduate high school and become nothing, while the nerd goes on to be rich and famous. But there’s this time in between that — middle school and high school — and bullying can be vicious. Self-worth and confidence can be so hard to gain. I know all too well what it’s like to grow up so eager to fit in that you change who are you. What you don’t know at the time is that person you used to be… you can’t ever get them back.
I have such conflicting feelings about middle school. On the one hand, it’s a great place to be a nerd, because there finally are opportunities to find other kids who share those same interests. I think there’s such a good chance that his confidence will grow once he finds his people, and isn’t feeling like he’s alone. But on the other hand, middle school is such a hard time in a kid’s life. Middle school is brutal. Is it just going to get worse?
I wish that there was more support for the nerds out there. It’s not easy to be a kid who’s a nerd in a world that idolizes sports. All I can do is try to encourage him to find other friends like him, and encourage him in his interests. He may never be the popular athlete, and I pray with all my heart that he knows the accomplishments he makes are just as good, just as important, even if the applause isn’t quite as loud.
Due to the sensitivity of this topic, the author wishes to remain anonymous.
