Introduction
Public speaking can be nerve-wrecking for all of us. Researchers suggest that almost 75 percent of adults have stage fright. Another research indicated that the second most prominent fear among the people is fear of death, while fear of public speaking is the first.
Speaking in front of people can make your heart beat faster and give you butterflies. But no worries, the best part is that you can overcome your fear by engaging in public speaking activities. The early you start, the better your chances of learning efficiently. Learning the skill of public speaking as a child is relatively easy and rather a fun activity to do.
Here are a few ways in which you can help your child gain confidence through public speaking :
1. Encourage them to speak
Speaking in front of people might seem like a doable task if you are in the habit of speaking daily. Ask your kids about their day at school, what they learned today, about their school life, their friends, etc. This will bring them into the habit of collecting their thoughts and expressing them distinctly.
Also, speaking with friends and family will help them to overcome shyness around expressing their feelings. Involve them in the activity of paying at the store counter. This will help them to speak to unfamiliar people. Furthermore, whenever you have guests over, let your children introduce themselves and interact with them.
Moreover, encourage them to speak on the phone with your friends and family. This could include calling their grandparents to let them know about the painting they made at school or speaking to their cousins about their hobbies. This is an effortless way of building esteem and getting comfortable with expressing their thoughts. This will definitely help them gain confidence in public speaking.
2. Encourage them to participate in various activities held at school
Impromptu elocution competitions held at the schools can act as a great source for your children to gain confidence through public speaking. The main objective behind these impromptu competitions is to help participants collect their thoughts and deliver them with creativity.
Also, speaking in front of teachers and peers will provide them with a sense of accomplishment. The key to public speaking is getting comfortable with communicating with familiar as well as unfamiliar faces.
They can also participate in various drama clubs. These clubs are really helpful in getting rid of stage fear. They not only emphasize speaking but also various components like body language, voice modulation, speech delivery, etc.
Also, applaud them. This will boost their self-confidence, and they will keenly participate in these events in the future.
3. Documenting daily life in videos
You can encourage your kids to document their daily life and their opinions in a video. This approach will also help them to become comfortable in sharing their thoughts without the fear of being judged.
This is a fun way of learning. Making videos for fun will help them to gain the confidence that is needed for public speaking. Whether you choose to post these videos online or not, you can always rewatch these videos and make a note of the points that you might need to improve on.
4. Writing down your thoughts
Now, this might come as a surprise, but it is true that writing regularly can help you become a confident public speaker. Have you ever wondered why we stutter or take long pauses while trying to speak in front of people? Well, the reason behind this is the inability to speak and think in a synchronized way. We speak faster than we can collect our thoughts, and thus we fall short of relevant words. The solution to this is developing a habit of writing. We write slower than we speak. Hence we get enough time to collect our thoughts and deliver them efficiently. This will definitely help you next time you are speaking in front of a large number of people.
5. Record them while they are speaking
Record your child’s voice while they are giving a speech and ask them to go through that voice note. By doing so, they can get an idea about how they sound to others and what kind of emotions are generated.
This method of self-reflecting can help them point out their flaws and work on them the next time they are delivering a speech.
Conclusion
Communication skills play an important role in shaping one’s personality. And public speaking is a way to enhance your communication skills. To help your child gain confidence through public speaking, you can adopt the above-mentioned ways.
Furthermore, to know more about the different strategies that can be implemented, please feel free to contact Orator Academy. We have mentored numerous children and helped them overcome their fear of public speaking.
