How to Build Self Confidence in a Child through Speech and Drama

Speech and drama activities are an ideal way to build self confidence in a child. If you have a child anxious or afraid of speaking up in front of a class, adults, or perhaps even their peers, the suggestions and activities outlined below will help you to help them. The positive benefits will spill over into all areas of their lives.

• Start slowly and simply. A nervous child is easily overwhelmed. Asking too much, too soon, will compound their problems. Choose your beginning point with care. Put yourself in the child's shoes and ask yourself, 'Is this a little step or a giant stride?' Being 'cruel to be kind' can backfire.



• Role model the behaviour you want from the child. Show them it's OK and safe. Do the exercises with them. This has a wonderful double-whammy pay off. They feel valued because you gave them time and attention AND they are learning new skills.

Speech & Drama Activities to Build Self Confidence in a Child

• Build self confidence in a child by making unpressured time to talk with them. Many of us talk to or talk at a child. We give instructions like 'Clean your teeth.' or 'Pick your toys up.'. This type of communication is very different from talking with. To talk with implies you are actively making room or time to listen to their side of the conversation.



• Another simple way to build self confidence in a child is to ask open-ended questions. These require more of a response than a simple 'yes' or 'no'. Try asking 'why' or 'how' to elicit extended answers.



• Get down to their level to build self confidence in a child. If they're sitting on the floor playing, get down with them. This reduces the gulph between big and powerful, small and insignificant.



• Avoid doing the talking for a child. Sometimes as adults it's easy to assume spokesperson status habitually. The child learns that you'll do all the talking for them and they don't have to try. They also learn you'll do it better than they can anyway. In doing the talking you rob them of practice time. Give it back to them. Even though you may have to wait for them to find the right words at times, know you're helping build self confidence in a child!



• Avoid reinforcing baby language by repeating it frequently. This can be hard as sometimes a child's vocabulary mistakes are delightful and we don't want to let them go. But we must if we want them to grow. We can write down and cherish the errors but keeping them live for too long is unkind.



• Avoid teaching a baby language. Why complicate learning to speak with giving a child a sub-language to learn which later must be un-learnt? Build self confidence in a child by teaching the right words from the start. By this I don't mean pedantically correct language but definitely giving them a vocabulary appropriate for their age.



• Build self confidence in a child through making a point of praising their speech and correcting mis-pronounced words non-judgementally. 'Good on you for trying xxx (said correctly) word. It can be tricky. Let's say it slowly together.'



• Build self confidence in a child by playing lots of language games. (These are great for car journeys.) Examples: Alphabet 'I spy': I spy with my little eye something beginning with a, b, c, d etc., Rhyming word-chains: words starting with or ending in the same sounds. Example: cat, mat, fat, flat, sat...Or flat, floor, flood, flew, flop...



• Build self confidence in a child by reading stories aloud to them daily. When they're very small start with stories built around repeating phrases and rhymes. If you read the same story frequently enough, your child will begin 'reading' it along with you. Miss bits and they'll correct you. Talk with them as you go about the pictures. Get them to tell you about what's happening in them.



• Singing songs is a delightful way to build self confidence in a child. Get your child singing along. If it's a favorite you can take alternate verses or take turns making up songs about whatever is going on around right now. Pick a well known tune ( 'Old Macdonald Had a Farm' is good.) and have fun. I remember our son enjoying variations like, 'Our Big Boy James is putting on his boots, e, i, i, o. He puts his right foot in and wriggles it around, e, i, e, i, o'...etc.



• Read poetry aloud to build self confidence in a child. Children love the sounds of poetry and will readily imitate them. Try nonsense poems, fantastical poems, or ones with a strong beat full of words sounding their meaning. Your local library will have anthologies in the Children's Section. Ask for help if you can't find them.



• Encourage 'talking time' at the dinner table to build self confidence in a child. Make sure each child has a turn is listened to and not interupted. If need be put a time limit in place for the one who goes on and on! When they're finished, paraphrase what you heard and respond.



• If your child has difficulty speaking clearly and you're worried it could be a physical problem, get it assessed sooner rather than later. The problem may lie in their hearing or the formation of the physical organs and body parts needed for speech. Specialized therapists will do a superb job of advising the right way to address the matter. If you allow a speech fault to establish, they become harder to stop.



• Going to a local play-group or kindergarten will definitely build self confidence in a child. They'll learn in a protected safe environment to interact with people outside of their family circle.



• Take your child when you go visiting or shopping. It doesn't have to be all the time but enough for them to learn to feel comfortable in new situations with new people.



• Teach your child simple good manners and expect them to use them as a normal part of daily living. Making their own requests politely and thanking people for things or services received will build self confidence in a child and is a valuable first step toward solo public speaking.



• Model good listening and speech. A child learns from those closest to them. If you don't listen or speak well, it becomes more difficult for the child to develop the confidence to do so.

• Build self confidence in a child by actively encouraging their imagination and allowing them to experiment and play with dress-ups. We had a large wicker basket of old clothes. There was a cloak, coats, some hats, lots of scarves, shoes, bags etc, etc. I found the more definite the costume, the less it appealed. The more flexible the items were, the more readily they were put on. The cloak was magical one day because it made the wearer invisible and the next it became a glamor item for going to the ball.
  Also favored were discarded 'father' or 'mother' clothes. These allowed children to experiment with being adult.



• Build self confidence in a child by encouraging the retelling of stories in their own words. Choose either true family events or a familiar tale that's been read and read as a bedtime story. Within these, encourage taking on the voices of the characters. How did the wolf talk? What did the Grandmother say? How did her voice sound? Can you make that voice?



• Take your children to listen to story-tellers or children's theatre



• Listen to story CD's or tapes read by trained actors.



• Limit the amount of television a child watches and monitor what they do see. Television programs have been shown to deaden the imagination rather than encourage it. A child watching is not working actively, they're passive. In comparison, making your own play is hard work physically and mentally. Turning off the television will really help build self confidence in a child!



• Build self confidence in a child by allowing 'truth' or 'reality' to be suspended providing the play is safe. Jumping off the garage roof with an umbrella for wings is going to hurt but having an invisible friend or changing your name for awhile is relatively harmless. Provided it's accommodated without undue fuss (either negative or positive), your child will let it go when they're finished with it.



• Allow for 'mess' to happen. The easist way is to say where and when the play can occur without inconveniencing everybody.



• Play yourself. Your example will build self confidence in a child. Get involved without taking over the direction of a story or piece of play acting. This way you're showing it's OK to 'pretend' and leaving the authority with the child. We've eaten dinner with spare chairs and places set for invisible guests who asked for special foods. I remember a toy train that talked, a teddy bear who threw temper tantrums...



• If the child volunteers to make a play, tell a story, sing a song for the family to watch, help them to do it without taking over. Build self confidence in a child by ensuring any comment or feedback is constructively positive and appropriate.



• Do discuss the plays or fantasies your child creates with other adults in their presence but avoid ridicule or mockery. Be careful too, about setting them up as entertainment outside the family particularly if they are under eight. Too much attention and praise for being clever, amusing, a real clown or for copying an adult performer can slow their character development. There is a fine line between learning about being another and learning to be one's self. You don't want a child whose sense of well being is largely derived from being the centre of attention and someonelse!



• If you decide to take your child to drama lessons or a group, check the agenda before enrolling. Some groups offer wonderful programs designed to enrich and extend appropriately. Others are not so scrupulous. A child is a child. They should be allowed and encouraged to be one. Ask to see a curriculum and talk over teaching styles.
  A very shy child can be encouraged to participate gradually through for instance taking part in group or chorus work before taking on solo parts. Instant solo focus or insensitive comparision with a more outgoing child will shut a tender one down quickly.
  
  
• If you do offer criticism because you were asked, to build self confidence in a child, do make sure it follows a commend-recommend-commend model. Do not compare one child with another. If you must compare do so with what that particular child did yesterday and what they did today or in this part of the play and that part of the play. Be specific rather than global in your comments. Telling a child he did a great job or that it was awful doesn't communicate anything useful. The first gives him nothing to improve or build on. (It's all good, so why bother?) The second denies anything of value happened. (Again, why bother?) To build self confidence in a child, also practice asking them for their crtique. They will know what happened. Help them to learn to trust and refine their own judgement.

• Re-telling well known stories in which the child takes on the voices and actions of all the characters. Examples: Little Red-Riding Hood, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, or some of the wonderful Dr.Suess stories. ( Don't get carried away with costume and make-up. The less, the better. The key is not the trappings but the drama itself and living into it as vividly as possible.)



• To help build self confidence in a child take a theme from a current lesson to turn into a mini-drama. This could focus on the people involved or the things.The cycle of the seasons for instance adapts well. It could be taken from Winter's point of view, then Spring's etc, etc. With imagination any lesson has dramatic potential. The idea is to keep it simple. Once they get too complicated they can spiral out of control and become overwhelming. The length should be about 3 minutes maximum to start with. Encourage structure: Introduction, Middle or Development and Conclusion.



• Talk as if...you're a showman at a fair, you're a Queen, you're a radio announcer, you're a rock star, you're an elderly person, you're very brave...
  Ring in the changes promptly allowing about one minute between each. Do it with your child. Once they get confident swop suggestions back and forth. If you get met with refusal to play, don't buy the argument or go into long explanations about how it is good for them. Instead, step back and realise they are probably feeling afraid of getting it wrong! Show them by doing it yourself that you don't have to be perfect.



• Walk as if...you're a cat, you're very tall, you've got wobbly legs, you've got one foot always wanting to go its own way, you're important, you're very shy, you're the President, you're walking on ice...
  Again the key is rapid changes of bodylanguage. This is a fun game to play in the park or going for a walk. Watch though that you don't expose the child to ridicule either through your own antics or their's. Choose your moments!



• Swop a hat...Have a collection of hats. Each denotes a different character. When you're wearing this one, you talk and move like this. When you're wearing another, you behave differently. The more radically different the hats the better. You can source these very cheaply from your local thrift shop.



• Swop a face...Make a face and have your child copy it as exactly as they can. Hold it and speak as you think the face demands. Now it's you child's turn to give a face to you. Keep going. Making faces is fun and can be played anywhere!



• Make a small speech (story) about xxxx ( What I want for Christmas, My little brother,...) as if you were the King of the world, the man from the corner shop, Grandma...(Pick subjects and people or models the child knows so they don't to work too hard to imagine them.) The principal way this works is that being someone other than themselves, they do not have to feel too vulnerable because it's not them. It's someone else!.

• Giving lots of advance time so it doesn't spring on them.



• Ensuring there is topic selection help available.



• Providing models (especially older children who have been there, done that, and survived) to share their experiences and wisdom.



• If the class dynamic supports it, using a buddy-system for planning, writing, and rehearsal. Team up people so as the doubtful are placed with those who can support with care. Provide clear guide-lines for good support practices.



• Organise rehearsal times in which you will be present to give suggestions. This gives a scared child experience of the space and speaking ahead of the real thing.



• If circumstances permit, be flexible enough to allow speeches said to a chosen few, on tape etc.



• Be sure to praise any move toward conquering their fear.

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