they are trying to motivate him. a girl who dates a guy her mother thinks is "great" must be one of the FEW with her head on straight. honestly, their academic performance differing greatly does weight the deck against them, but girls who date nice guys are so rare I do not know how that changes things. as long as they both are cool with her being smarter than him they just might work.

Perhaps but surely you can see where they are coming from and what the motivation behind the comments is? OK, it's not the best way to go about things and may not achieved the desired results, but still, they are attempting to get him to pull his socks up. Perhaps the thing that is holding him back is not a lack of intelligence but laziness instead.

tell them to pressure the teachers instead of the kid, cause they're obviously not doing their job

What lousy parents they are. "Book" smarts is not the only valuable character trait. There is common sense, creativity, social skills, dependability, fidelity, kindness, acceptance, humor, modesty, being supportive, being honest. Poor guy! Maybe he is a real jewel, a really great guy..so he is not bookish? So what? She is. That's good. We have different strengths and weaknesses..and no one is any "better" for his/her strengths than anyone else..nor is anyone "worse" than anyone else for his/her weaknesses. Shame on those parents. Bad job! :(

I would like to understand and present both sides of the argument here :) It's a good thing that you are supportive of him. It's actually great that you are not judging him by his grades. I'm certainly glad to hear that. However, you are not his parents and you cant QUIET understand their perspective. For them, to see him successful could be their greatest aspiration. For all we know this could be something they based their entire life around, and if this is the only way they find to motivate him, you shouldn't counter it. Perhaps you should encourage him to study harder (not exactly the way his parents do) but if you keep telling him his parents are bad for saying that, you are really undoing the work they put in to raise him. Just imagine if someone was to tell your daughter how wrong you are for telling her to not get a tattoo, I'm sure one of her friends mom did, you never know! Just tell him that he should study harder because before he knows, life will hit him in the face and a career would be MUCH needed. And to maintain his mental stability, you could always assure him that your daughter will never leave him for THOSE reasons because she was raised to know better :)

Why do people always defend losers now? Girls keep getting told it is OK to date a loser and not to look down on them. This is horrible. These losers keep having more loser kids instead of our best and brightest who only have one or two and soon enough America won't be the great country it once was.

Boy, talk about beating someone down instead of building them up!!!! How can someone thrive under negative pressure like that?! You're right, Lisa! That sucks! No wonder the guy doesn't do well in school!

what are you two telling the great guy? that he doesnt have to do better?