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Key points
- Performance anxiety can lead to symptoms that compromise high performance.
- Children who believe that they are no better than their last win maintain a deficiency in their self-concept.
- Children motivated by unconditional love—not fear—will more typically achieve high levels of performance.
- Some children focus on performance to compensate for an impoverished self-concept.
Performance anxiety presents as unusually strong worry or fear around activities that involve accomplishment. It can be experienced in any number of areas that range from public speaking to athletic performance, academics to sexuality, test-taking to interviewing.
The causes of performance anxiety are varied, but the process is the same. The threat of failure or lowered performance can lead to symptoms that can compromise high performance.
Athletic performance anxiety is a subset of generalized performance anxiety. Ironically, performance anxiety can actually increase the risk of injury among athletes.
What are the signs of performance anxiety in children?
The symptoms of performance anxiety include physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, fast or shallow breathing, dry mouth, sweating, and pale or flushed skin. These symptoms can be accompanied by ruminations centered around the fear of failure and/or negative outcomes associated with failure. “I’ll never get into college with these grades.” “No one will like me if I mess up the speech." “If I perform a dance at the talent show, the whole school will laugh at me.”
Behavior patterns can vary widely, particularly in children. Some children may become obsessed with practicing, studying, or repetition, while other children can become task-avoidant, delay homework or competitions, or display an “I don't care” attitude.
How can parents figure out what's going on?
Parents need to observe their children’s behavior and attitudes carefully. Asking these questions can also help.
- Does my child seem overly worried or anxious about performance issues?
- Does my child demonstrate excessive concern about performance such as staying up all night to study, being unable to sleep from worry around an exam or competitive event, or refusing to see friends in order to prepare or study?
- Has my child begun to avoid performance activities?
- Paradoxically, does my child act like they don't care about performance?
It is important for parents to talk to their children and ask them about their feelings around performance.
- Does the child feel satisfied or dissatisfied?
- Does the activity interfere with their child’s happiness or pleasure in life?
- Does it keep them from engaging in activities that they enjoy?
- Do they feel anxious or worried about performance?
- How do they feel about themselves if they don't make the grade they're hoping for or fail to compete at the level they desire?
What are some things that parents can do to help their children cope with performance anxiety?
- Help children realize that failure is survivable. Performing poorly from time to time is simply a part of life and does not have catastrophic consequences. Sharing stories about Uncle Edward who performed poorly in business but persisted and later was successful when he developed a new company is important.
- Build a positive self-concept, generally, by loving your child unconditionally. Children need to know that self-esteem is not dependent on performance but is an ongoing steady state. Accepting that the unexpected rain on the day of the bicycle race, which interfered with course conditions and his finish, is just another example of learning to accept and live with adversity and imperfection.
- Teach that success is not a comparative process. Parents should encourage children to reach for their “personal best” and help them develop their own steps in their chosen direction. In this way, it is important to avoid focusing on Betty who made a perfect score on the spelling test. More important is Edward’s solid improvement from 80 to 85 percent on his spelling words week over week.
- Reinforce children for effort. “You are working hard at your French and making progress. I bet you'll be able to speak to the waiter in the French restaurant in no time,” versus “Suzie is a real French whiz, I hear.”
- Encourage children to take charge where they can control things. They can train for a certain number of hours per day, or they can take classes from a classically trained musician. The focus here is on those opportunities, not the outcome.
- Celebrate the joy of the game and encourage your child to do the same. Both model and reinforce the benefit of fulfillment and happiness in the process of mastery.
- Be available with equal measures of affection for both the wins and losses over the course of your child’s efforts.
- Help children understand that life is a long time, and that their love of biking or swimming or basketball will persist. People bike at eighty, swim at sixty and seventy, and teach their children and grandchildren how to play the sports they love. Athletics is not just about performance. In the end, it is more about fulfillment and enjoyment as both a competitor and a fan.
What are some things that kids can do to cope with performance anxiety?
- Prepare in advance. Practicing, training, and rehearsing skills build confidence over time and are certainly required in order to perform well.
- Engage in daily exercise as an anti-stress activity.
- Develop pre-performance strategies to build confidence. For example, athletes may do cross-training in order to help their skill base, practice speeches at home before the actual presentation, or rehearse and memorize information in order to improve recall.
- Visualize the task or event with successful outcomes.
- Use self-calming such as meditation or mindfulness. There are a number of online tools to help both children and adults with these skills.
- Learn breathing exercises and practice other pre-performance rituals.
- Talk with a therapist. There are a number of treatment strategies available, including cognitive behavioral therapy, therapy that helps children learn specific tools to manage anxiety and performance, or more general counseling that helps people to feel more powerful and in control.
What are some helpful things that parents need to know about raising child athletes?
Parents must realize that their job is not to put more pressure on their child but rather remove pressure from them. This is done primarily through unconditional love that remains constant over time:
- “I love you no matter what the outcome is.”
- “I will help you in any way I can as you try to reach your goal.”
- “Your value never changes in my eyes, and my affection for you never diminishes.”
Children who grow up believing that they are no better than their last win maintain a deficiency in their self-concept that can last a lifetime.
Consider the following more foundational goals:
My child has…
- confidence in their ability to work hard,
- respect for their skills and abilities,
- developed knowledge of themselves and others,
- experienced fond memories of being a part of a team or group,
- shared meaningful experiences with their mothers and fathers,
- felt celebrated and supported through victory and defeat,
- known love as constant, and
- had fun along the way.
Children motivated by love—not fear—will more typically achieve high levels of performance and reach personal fulfillment in their areas of interest and achievement.
Portions of this post also appear on the Scary Mommy Blog and drmaryannlittle.com.
