How can we help boys who suffer from the belief that being clever is uncool?

[TooTicky]

A few days ago, I overheard ds1 saying that if you are clever people make fun of you and you have no friends, so that's why he "acts dumb".
This seems to be worse for boys than girls.
I know he hasn't been working to the best of his abilities (to put it mildly) but didn't realise that this was why

I honestly think this is often just a hook. IME it is just fine to be clever as long as you are also in with the in crowd. And that is down to attitude really. Not brains.

Frogs - thanks for that link BTW, it looks very impressive. Ds is only 5 nearly 6 but I can see in a couple of years that would be excellent for him.

I think that just as we should not dumb down our boys, I would also warn against going too far the other way. Children need a "common currency" to their discussion, and I think you can slightly hinder your child if you deny them access to this.

One of my mates did not have a tv when she was small - in fact had never seen it until she was about 12. She said she was extremely uncool as she never even knew about programmes like Blue Peter - couldn't even join in with and contribute to ordinary plaground stuff like playing Scooby Doo etc.

Forgot to say DS was very much into Pokemon and Yu gi oh cards which probably helped.