Rehearsing Presentations with Your Child: Effective Strategies and Tips

How to rehearse presentations with your child. If you just say to your child, hey, would you like to rehearse with me? I guarantee you they're going to say, no, thanks, Mom, I'll pass. Dad, Nobody likes to rehearse. Doesn't matter if they're 50 years old or 5 years old. There's a natural human tendency to think, no, let's wait for another day. Let's wait for another time. Let me rewrite my speech a whole bunch of times. All worthless excuses. And yet rehearsal is really the most important part of this whole process. My recommendation is just pick up either an iPad. That's my preference, an iPad or a cell phone and just turn it on and say, tell me your first minute or so. Record them. Don't even ask. Now, they can always run into another room, but if you really want to help them, they're willing to let you. At some point they will let you rehearse. Now, I like using an iPad because then when you're playing it back, it's a relatively big screen and they can see themselves. That's critically important. But you could use any cell phone. So my big advice here is don't wait for them to invite you to rehearse. Don't even ask permission. Just hold it up, hit record and say, tell me about this subject that gets them going. Remember, human beings are hardwired to fear risk. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button right now. We are taught biologically to have our adrenaline flowing when risk is coming our way. We either run or we freeze when we sense danger. Public speaking is a type of danger people feel, so they're going to want to either run away or freeze. That is a completely normal human reaction. If your child is not enthusiastic about public speaking training, that means they are perfectly normal. But we want to help them get over this. This is extraordinarily important. If you can get your child used to practicing on video, that alone is going to put them in the top 5% of speakers for the rest of their life if they just get used to that one habit. So my recommendation, find a cell phone, find an iPad, preferably. That's generally easier than having a regular webcam where you have to or video camera where you have to take a chip out and put it into a computer or your tv. So figure out what tool you're going to use, because this is really the most important technology in helping your child become a great public speaker. Practice and practice on video. So have your kid get up or sit down. If they prefer to sit down, record them speaking and let them decide when they're going to start and when they are going to finish. I recommend keeping it relatively short to begin with. So if it's a big half hour speech, just start with the first three minutes. Record it. Don't show anything on your face to express that you're surprised, or shocked or disappointed or annoyed. Just look attentively, positively, perhaps with a slight smile on your face. So I want you to go ahead and do this now. And I realize it may be late at night when you're watching this, your child's asleep. But first thing tomorrow, or the first opportunity, practice some speech they're doing. Capture it on video. Please try to do it now or within the next 24 hours.