Every once in a while you may find a naughty kid in your events that is trying to get all the attention for himself and not following your instructions for whatever reason they have. I have a 5 progressive step plan that I use to handle these situations. If the first step doesn’t work then I just follow the next step.
-The first step is to be kind to the kid. While staying in your character tell them firmly that they should not be doing that (whatever naughty behavior they are doing) because it hurts the feeling of others.
-The second step is trying to make them your helper, this gives them the recognition they might be looking for. The way this step has work for me is that I tell the kid that I have a secret that I want to tell him or her. The secret is that if he or she helps me and follow all my instructions, I will give him or her a secret prize when we’re done. If they follow my instructions, great.
– The third step is that I get out of character and talk to the kid with my regular voice that if he or she continues I’m going to tell his or her parents.
– The fourth step, I call the person in charge of the event and tell them about the problem I might be having with the kid.
– And the fifth and last step is that I stop everything I’m doing and call the kid’s parent or the person in charge of the kid to please come forward and take the kid away or I will not continue with my show.
I have only done this last part on maybe 5 occasions in my 11 years of clowning around. Usually, by the second step, I have a nice cooperating helper with me following all the instructions I say.
But sometimes I have gotten to the 3rd and 4th step. It all depends on how bad the situation gets.
The 5th step might sound a little harsh, but by the time I have gotten there, everybody present in the event has seen me work through all the prior steps to try to fix the bad behavior of the kid.
This is a process that I have developed during the years and it has work for me to control uncomfortable situations. If these steps are a fit with your personality, you are free to use them. If they are not a fit, you can modify them to fit your style. You can also create your own steps to control the naughty kids.
One thing is for sure… And that is that you need a system for when this happens because at some point it will happen if you have not had this experience before.
Pikorete The Clown and Pompita The Face Painter serves the area in Rochester, NY and nearby cities. Pikorete likes to celebrate Birthdays for kids and adults alike, Baby Showers, Sweet 16, Graduations, Weddings, school parties and any other event that the host wants it to be fun. His specialty is making little people and big people, young and old, laugh with his funny games, dances, and other crazy stuffs that he does or that he invents at the moment. You can visit his website at http://www.pikoretetheclown.com