“Aren’t you angry about the bad grades?” she asked. “Why should I be angry?” I said. “They’re your grades. If you’re happy with them, then that’s all that matters.” She wasn’t happy with them, and in a very short time she brought them all up. If I had berated her for her low grades, she might have felt disempowered and angry and could have let all of her grades slip further just to show me. When I gave her the authority to decide if her grades were acceptable, she made choices that were actually beyond what I would have encouraged her to aspire to.
