ABSTRACT
Getting help from others is something that begins in early childhood and is expected as part of the learning process at that time. Parents provide guidance that enables their children to take on pieces of complex tasks while maintaining support from someone else. Parents differ in how sensitive they are to providing an appropriate level of intervention that is within their children’s understanding but that is not overly directive. The supportive environment parents provide has been referred to as scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Although the complexity of parent help giving has been explored extensively, the variation in children’s help seeking has been relatively neglected (Nelson-Le Gall, 1981). Similar to the variation that exists in parents’ help giving, children’s help-seeking behaviors can take many forms.
