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"Thomas didn't want to try things he wouldn't be successful at," his father says. "Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn't, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, 'I'm not good at this.'

I've got one of these kids too. The Optimistic Child also deals with this issue, and includes results of school experiments in which some children were used as the control group and others had the importance of effort drummed into them, with positive results.