The way we see a child will often shape the behaviors we evoke from him. In a well-known study, two educators placed children of average intelligence with teachers who were told that their new pupils were exceptionally bright. This “pseudo-gifted” group uniformly wound up with better grades and better scholastic performances than a matched group of controls. As with intelligence, so too with behaviors—malleable kids live up, or down, to our expectations. Sugar and spice and everything nice is what we expect little girls to be made of. As Ben reminds us, boys may not fare quite as well. By not
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