by Promod Sharma, President 2011-2012, CCIf 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
- Finding the right Toastmasters club for you
- Three steps to get the most out of Toastmasters
- Three steps to get understood better
- Table Topics ideas
- image courtesy of Stanislav Komogorov
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