Managing Stage Fear & Anxiety – Mastering the Stage Experience

If you have a child who is fearful or worried about public speaking, you are not alone in this journey. The common experience we see over at the Public Speaking Academy are students, learners, communicators who grapple with stage fear or anxiety and are taking steps to overcome it. Managing this fear/anxiety, especially for our young learners, need not only happen during the formal training sessions. Instead, the home provides a safe space for learners to build that comfort on stage!

As a start, understanding this fear/anxiety will go a long way to helping your child. Stage fear/anxiety is not something to be ‘cured’ or ‘eliminated’ – instead, the goal is often about managing the same fear or anxiety on stage. We approach this from a stage confidence angle – the idea is to build comfort for that few minutes on stage. We believe that this can be something that you can try out at home, even without a formal public speaking programme.

To help you in this process, here are a few tips on how you can guide your child through the uncertainty of public speaking!

Public Speaking Tip #1: Understanding the Fear

When it comes to stage fear/anxiety, a conversation that rarely happens is understanding the triggers and main causes for it. This is an open and honest conversation that you can initiate with your child to develop the growth mindset in approaching the challenging speech setting. The aim is not to prescribe but to appreciate the unique concerns, even at a young age.

One method of approaching this conversation is through a progressive, open-ended discussion. Start by inviting your child to reflect on past speaking experiences and adopt a vocabulary to describe an experience. An example of a response to a child saying “scared” can be “how did you know / what did you feel on stage?”. Here, we encourage the child to arrive at a precise understanding of the challenge they faced on stage. These conversations may invite the communicator to move from seeing things in extremes and realise that building comfort on stage is a progressive journey.

Public Speaking Tip #2: The Incremental Approach

One of the teaching methodologies we adopt is based on the belief that a child’s public speaking confidence journey is incremental. As such, stage confidence is not a ‘final’ goal to achieve – there is always something to build on. For a young communicator grappling with stage fear/anxiety, it is important to let them enjoy the comfortable space of progressing at their own pace. This is the incremental approach.

This is a safe area that you can contribute to even at home. We have shared how one of the best ways to start public speaking training at home is to discover your child’s underlying passion/interests. Similarly, we start with attainable, digestible goals and easier for your child to manage. For example, instead of simply “being more confident”, we start with a bite-sized target, such as maintaining a steady posture or relaxing the shoulders. The idea is to let them develop at a comfortable pace!

Public Speaking Tip #3: Stage Fear Management

Beyond the tips above, various stage fear management techniques can help your child build that comfort, at least for that presentation. These can range from short to long-term alternatives and can be nurtured even at home. We recommend approaching these techniques as a habit-building process instead of a ‘magic pill’. Let your child explore the various techniques and choose one that is comfortable for them!

One of the key techniques that our young learners enjoy is power poses. This involves changing our body’s physical shape and posture to create a mental effect. This is meant to be a short-term, reassuring tool rather than a long-term outcome, but by this very nature, it may prove suitable for young communicators starting. Invite your child to try out superhero poses (think: superman!) or stretched out postures (hands raised and stretched), and discuss its effects!