Eight year-old No. One stood in front of a room of 50 people at the junior track of engineering conference with a mic and a laser pointer. She was describing a two-bit binary adder she’d built, and she nailed it! She and her sibs pretty routinely speak in public—although not with that big of an audience—in one form or another. To them, it’s not a big deal. It’s something everyone else around them does, so why wouldn’t they? They never got the memo telling them that public speaking was something to be feared. Part of their comfort—I think—has to do with the fact that they inadvertently grew up speaking in public; thanks in part to me being lazy. Here are five things we did together that I think got them used to the idea of public speaking. Paying the ticket at the restaurant: It’s always been the job of the youngest kid to take our money for the restaurant bill to our server. The three to four year-old kid wanders around, finds the pers...