May 13, 2012

Mommy, Learn To Speak Better

mother and childby Promod Sharma, President 2011-2012, CC

If you're a mother with a young child, your speaking skills may deteriorate. When you spend time with other mothers with young children don’t you talk about similar issues? You need a break.

Would you like to sharpen your communication skills? Consider joining a Toastmasters community club. You meet adults with diverse backgrounds and get a chance to stop speaking like a mommy.

Preparation Time

You’re busy. You may not have much time to prepare. Some roles like Greeter, Timer and Crutchword Counter require no preparation. Roles like Quote Master, Trivia Master or Humour Master require limited preparation.

Random

Table Topics gives you an opportunity to practice your impromptu speaking. You talk about a randomly-selected topic for a minute. Since children come up with the weirdest things, you may already be good at this. You may get ideas to discuss at home.

This week, we pulled pennies from a bag and spoke about what we did that year. The assignment was both easy and difficult. Depending on how old your children are, you could do something similar. For instance, use a magnifying glass find the date on the coin (that'll be fun). Take the last digit of the year and treat that as an age. What were you doing at that age? [Not recommended for children who swallow coins.]

Speeches

Children have such energy and curiosity. Your experiences with them could be ideal for speeches. You won't know unless you try. Notice how children make many mistakes but learn from them. If you fear speaking in public, Toastmasters gives you a safe environment to improve.

As a side benefit, you can practice your speeches with your children and get them creating stories. Learning the basic structure of having a beginning, middle and end gives them a solid foundation for future speaking. You're also showing the importance of communication skills.

Other

It's Mother's Day today. Maybe you get breakfast in bed, a nice card or a meal out. Enjoy that.

For a gift with lasting value, consider Toastmasters. You'll find an inexpensive and worthwhile way to spend solo time away from home. We're well-behaved.

Links

Promod Sharma wishes all mothers a wonderful Mother's Day (promodsharma.com).

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