Did you ever have to give a presentation to your class when you were in school?  Did you ever have to do this when you were not well prepared?  Maybe not, but I am sure that you can imagine how you would feel if this were the case.  Chances are you would feel anxious; some would feel that anxiety even if they were well prepared for the presentation.  This is aptly called “performance anxiety”.  This kind of anxiety is very common for people with Down syndrome and I believe that it is important that teachers and parents alike be aware of this so that they can help prevent the anxiety affecting their school work.  

Why would someone with no self consciousness have performance anxiety?

 

Enjoying a dance to good music in the aisle of a movie theater (I joined Allie once) or showing off on a stage is not the same thing.   Performance anxiety stems from a fear of failure and often adversely impacts school work.  Usually it shows itself when a child starts school and starts to experience difficulty with academic work.  It makes a lot of sense when you consider that a child with an intellectual disability, by definition, has difficulty learning.  When asked to do something that is hard (i.e., learning) then it is likely that a child might start trying to avoid a particular learning situation (e.g., math) or more seriously, any learning situation.  The obvious ramifications of this are challenging behavior and secondary impairment to learning.  It is important to be aware of this situation so that children can be supported to be good learners (i.e., the best that they can be.)

The best way to avoid this anxiety is to prevent it as much as possible (it is natural to experience anxiety at times.)  There are a few simple ways to do this:

 

• Be a good model.  We always want to show our children the best possible model so we always color in the lines and pour our milk with no spills.  Unfortunately, this is not realistic and can set too high of a goal for our children.  We want to encourage coloring in the lines, and praise effort to color in the lines, but I think it is helpful to model that life isn’t perfect and how to handle mistakes.  If a child learns these lessons then performance anxiety has no real basis to exist.  If I learn to approach math with the understanding that sometimes I will make mistakes and how to obtain help, etc, then I am less likely to be too anxious to take the challenge.  I think the problem is when our children see us as parents and teachers always turning out beautifully-colored pages that they see the bar as too high.  If, on the other hand, you “accidentally” color a few strokes outside of the line in front of your child and model some response like “Rats! Nevermind” and carry on then your child is seeing that life isn’t perfect and how they can respond in a similar situation.  You are also modeling perseverance which is an invaluable tool.  

 

• When first teaching a new skill, use errorless learning.  Errorless learning is a process by which introduce a learning situation in such a way that your child can only succeed.  For example, ask your child to show you the red car and point to it to help them find the right one.  Basically, you are making sure that they arrive at the correct response in whatever way seems appropriate.  

 

• When your child has been exposed to a new skill for a while, let them make mistakes.  After you have presented a skill such as color identification for a while, stop giving the correct answers.  Ask for that red car and don’t indicate the answer.  If everything is always errorless then a child does not learn how to handle mistakes.  The important thing here is how to cope with mistakes.  Make sure that your response is light and matter-of-fact.  If your child believes that you are disappointed or frustrated, then that puts an emotional price on failure and makes a child reluctant to want to try.

 

• Teach, don’t test.  Nothing supports performance anxiety like someone in your face staring at you with an expectant look after asking you a question.  Remember how you felt when you ran into someone you recognized but you could not recall the name or where you knew them?  Yikes, that’s a horrible feeling.  If you want to teach a skill, teach it.  If you want to know if a child has acquired a skill (e.g., “where is that red car?”) then by all means ask the question but don’t make it appear as though it is a test.  If they don’t give the correct answer or pause too long, just give them the answer.  

 

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