Juggling for small children

I juggled for my daughter's Mother's Day Out program on Monday, and it got me thinking about juggling for the smaller kids.

Most of my main repertoire is heavily verbal and uses a lot of audience participation and interaction. And I've learned that that's not what goes over well with the smaller kids, the two- to four-year-old set.


I used to think that juggling in general didn't go over all that well with kids that small, actually. But I've learned to tailor my act for the smaller ages. It's not hard. We all have a good time if I:

• Make sure I speak slowly and clearly
• Focus on making everything big, broad, and flashy
• Drop material that that requires participation from the kids
• Use an adult if I absolutely have to have participation
• Avoid teasing and subtlety unless aimed at the adults
• Skip danger-based tricks like knife juggling...they're not really into that
• Change my expectations...small kids take longer to get jokes and they don't see why some of the tricks are difficult.
  

And I thought about these things when I planned for this show...in fact, I'd made some notes about this sort of thing the last time I did a show for kids this small. As a result, the last couple of shows I've done for the wee ones have gone really well...very satisfying for all concerned. Not the least of which was my smallest kid. "You were funny, Daddy!" she said. I could have wished she wasn't so surprised... :)