A few years ago I was with a friend and her young son in the park. She encouraged him to try out the big slide and he got to the top of it… and panicked. He was terrified of going down.
There was a bit of conversation where we both tried to work out with him what to do about this.
Then I tried this idea. I said to him “What if I hold you all the way down the slide? I won’t let go so you can be safe and still get an idea what it’s like. Then see what you want to do after that.”
There was a little pause as he took this in. Then he said yes. I held him as promised.
When he got to the bottom he leapt from my hands rushed to the top of the slide and fairly whizzed down on his own.
Do not file under “knowledge management”. If you would like a bit of jargon to go with it, I guess you could try the Zone of Proximal Development.
