"Mr Anderegg [in Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them] tells a funny and moving story of one of his patients, a 13-year-old boy whose head-in-the-clouds parents sent him off to school every day in tracksuit bottoms, even though all the other children wore jeans. As a result he was ridiculed as a nerd. Mr Anderegg recalls how difficult it was to persuade the parents to consider buying their son a pair of jeans. Why should we, they scoffed. We love him as he is. Do we want to teach him that if other kids make fun of your appearance, you should change it? In the end, they were glad to be proved wrong. The boy got his jeans and the bullying stopped."
Sources
The Economist, Jan 10th 2008 review of Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them by David Anderegg
