Helping children find their way out of their comfort zones

We all have our comfort zones and specific things that take us outside of them. When we go outside of our comfort zones, we experience an abundance of feelings, that we mostly do not like. As adults, we know that in order to have gained a profession/career etc. somewhere along the journey, we had to go outside of our comfort zones e. g. sitting for exams; listening to a lecture on statistics; doing an oral presentation for our professor etc. We believe that one of a child's first experiences outside of his/her comfort zone, is probably, starting preschool. There is a new environment, new adults caring for him/her, new routine, new boundaries and much more.  These are some of the feelings that this can evoke viz. fear, uncertainty, sadness, discomfort, confusion etc. In order for us as adults to take ourselves outside of our comfort zones, somewhere we need to muster up courage, the ability to take risks and also find in ourselves some trust in our ability in that situation. 

 Learning can be scary especially if we are being pushed beyond something that we have never done before. Many children aren't averse to trying new things, if they are offered to them in the right way. "If we want children to successfully accomplish new challenges, they must be scaffolded with lower stake trials first"*. Ensuring a child's success is first and foremost in our minds. Once a child knows what it feels like to succeed, this can in itself, be a strong motivating factor when we introduce them to something new.

* Taken from an article written about children and their comfort zones.