Many children get butterflies when called for stage performance or class presentations. Performance anxiety, more popular as stage fright, is a common ordeal that terrifies many kids, keeping them from facing an audience. 

 Most people experience some level of nervousness and hesitation when speaking or performing in front of other people. Children are no exception to this social anxiety disorder. The fear of facing the public lowers the self-esteem of many kids, affecting their academic performance and even causing them to leave school.

 Stage fright causes children to suffer in silent terror. Most of them don’t discuss their fear with others, not even with their parents and siblings. If not helped at this juncture, stage fright is going to affect the life of the child in different, harmful ways.

 The good news is that our music lessons can help your child conquer stage fright and gain the confidence and self-esteem to perform on stage or in class without any fear or embarrassment.

Symptoms of stage fright

Also known as pre-show jitters, stage fright presents different symptoms. You should look for these signs in your children to decide whether they need help. Performance anxiety has both psychological and physical symptoms, including the following:

•    Shaking knees, lips, and voice

•    Racing pulse

•    Rapid breathing

•    Memory slips

•    Dry mouth

•    Wet and cold hands

•    Sickness and an anxiousness

•    Changes in vision

•    Feeling less or no secure

•    The fear of being mocked

•    Lower self-esteem

•    The fear that something will go wrong

If your child is having one or more of these symptoms, it’s time you should consider helping him or her without any delay. Severe stage fright can undermine even the brightest students. You can resort to different strategies to solve the problem at its core. One of the best ways to help your children with stage fright is to sign them up for music lessons. Music lessons involve continuous practice and performances that help boost the self-confidence of children.

Who does stage fright affect?

Stage fright is inexplicable as well as alarming. The condition becomes active on stage; however, it does not start on the stage in the first place. Performance anxiety is omnipresent. It affects many children during their early years but becomes prominent when the children come face to face with an audience.

Many children can’t stand before their peers to deliver class presentations. This can have devastating effects on their life and career in the long run. Music teachers not only teach music but are also a great source of mental and emotional support. They can help your child build the confidence to perform before an audience without any fear.

How can music lessons help?

Children are not able to overcome stage fright without external help. Conquering performance anxiety calls for a high level of insight that is not available to many of the sufferers. Most children think that they are the lone sufferers having difficult feelings. During our music lessons, the teachers speak openly about the condition, so the students become aware that stage fright affects many people.

We know that not all of us like being the center of attention. For this reason, we have established a norm of open communication in the classroom and encourage students to speak about their fears. The teachers are also trained to spot stage fright in students through psychological messages and symptoms of the condition.

During the music lessons, the teachers pay individual attention to each student. Repeated exposure and continuous practice help make the students courageous. Remember, any circumstance can become normal if practiced continuously. By having the students perform many times, our music teachers can help your child gain the confidence to face the public.

Clearing your thoughts

The precursors to being nervous on stage is having scatted thoughts. When our thoughts are not organized, we experience the fear of failure. This can trigger anxiety right before a performance.  

During music lessons, we encourage and help the students to clear their thoughts. They are taught to have a clear goal and set realistic expectations. When the intentions become clear, it helps the students become optimistic. For example, the music students are taught to play their heart out and hit the right notes when playing instruments. And when this process is repeated several times, the students can conquer stage fright.

Training, practice, rehearsal.

Practice and rehearsal are two powerful elements that can help your child overcome performance anxiety. During the music lessons, we expose the students to situations where they work on their instrument and skill. After gaining the skills, we expose them to actual performance in front of an audience. Practice and rehearsal are done repeatedly so that the anxiety disappears.

Mock performances, or Open Stages at our music school also help children spot their mistakes and conquer stage fright more effectively. We run our students through mock performances several times before the actual performance. The more times the students see themselves performing, the more objectively they evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. In this way, they are able to reduce the weaknesses and the uncertainties they may otherwise experience on stage.

 Training and preparation are yet other essential elements that we focus on during the music lessons. Proper training and preparation are the keys to reduce the pre-show jitters. Success in both sports and stage performance depend mainly on how trained and prepared you are for the day.

 For example, soccer players practice by playing loud, crowd noise to imitate the extra noises and uproars of the game day. We apply the same strategy during the mock performances. This training and preparation technique helps our students overcome stage fright.  

 Our music classes can be a great help for children suffering from performance anxiety. You child will overcome this social anxiety disorder and gain higher self-esteem by the time school starts. However, music lessons are no substitute for deep psychological techniques used by mental health professionals to treat patients suffering from severe anxiety. 

Contact us now to sign up if you think that our music lessons can be useful for your little one.

 Other music subjects you might be interested in from our blog:

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