Throughout my many years teaching voice and presentation skills, I have found that those who experience a truly debilitating and heartbreaking fear of public speaking have had a bad experience at some point during their elementary or even high school years when they are He asked them to stand up and speak. And while that event may not affect all children in the same way, for some the damage can be traumatic.
Please understand that I am not referring to the usual nervousness most of us experience when giving a presentation or giving a speech. That nervousness is good. It’s beneficial – that extra rush of adrenaline can help make your labor exhilarating. In my business, I do not advocate elimination of nervousness; instead, I teach people how to control it, allowing it to work for them, not against them.
Here, however, I am talking about a fear of public speaking that is extreme and is the result of an embarrassing or humiliating experience during childhood that the individual cannot forget. By the way, those who tell me that they do not remember such an event have often suppressed that memory, hoping not to think about it again because it is too painful.
Speaking in public is definitely difficult. Getting children in their elementary years to stand up and talk with a group of peers is more difficult. All it takes is a mispronunciation of a word, a memory lapse, an embarrassing misstep, a humiliating comment from another student or the teacher, and that child will never want to stand up and speak again. Being laughed at by classmates is agonizing.
Obviously, I am not an advocate for public speaking in elementary school. I think it’s a mistake and I don’t think we should place our children in that scenario at that tender age. In today’s schools, where children are meaner and less disciplined than ever, we are only adding fuel to the fire. Certainly not all children will have a bad experience; But is it worth it for those children who will suffer? [I am not talking about class plays which I think are a positive experience because they involve group participation. With the play, the child is not being singled out and has the entire class as support.]
One of my clients, a Toronto psychiatrist whose specialty was working with severely abused adults, was asked to speak at various symposia and conventions in Canada and the United States. She came to me for her inability to get on that stage. In talking to her, I discovered that at the age of 7, she and her cousin had sung a song in front of a group of people. When he finished, his father told him it was terrible. It is true that Frances had lived through years of abuse from her father, but she was an incredibly resilient woman and she was sure that it was that particular event that caused her to avoid public attention once again.
While working with Francis, I was able to increase his confidence level because he had a truly magnificent voice. I tried it and also knew that I could sing; therefore, I was able to assure her that when she was 7 years old, she probably sang well and that her father was a stupid and wrong man for treating her the way he did. (Actually, she died during the time I was working with her and she flew back to Ireland to ‘close her coffin!’)
While you may think Francis’s example is extreme, it actually isn’t. If you knew all the horror stories I’ve heard over the years, you would understand. In today’s world, where growing up is more difficult than ever, do we really need to subject our children to an experience that could cause irreparable damage to their self-esteem? Let’s take that pressure off them and use other positive means to reinforce their confidence and self-image.
