Our 12 year old is standing for class representative. There's a two-minute speech in front of the class. She has written half of it, all solid points about the library corner and the water cooler queue, and now she wants me to 'make it funny'. I write release notes for a living. Funny is not my department. How much should a parent help with something like this? Do I give her a couple of lines, or hand it back?
let her keep her points. kids that age vote for whoever makes them laugh in the first ten seconds, but they remember the water cooler too
Let her write it herself. Read it once and point out anything that won't be heard at the back of the room. My daughter lost hers in class 7 and still says it was the most useful two minutes of that year.
Fair, but she isn't asking me to write it. The points are hers. She wants two jokes at the start because the other candidate is the class comedian, and I suspect she's right about what wins.
I'd go a little further than reading it once. My father wrote my class 8 election speech, word for word, and I lost to a girl who had written her own, badly. I remember being more embarrassed about the speech than the result. If she wants jokes, maybe help her find her own funny line rather than handing her one?
a joke at her own expense, not anyone else's. only rule i'd give her
Good rule. She has a line about always being last to the water cooler, which might do it.
Keep going
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