During my school age I was plagued with negative thoughts. I was full of self -doubts. I was insecure, afraid of life, reluctant to try new things, and embarrassed about most things I did. Risk taking and trying new thing were preceded by procrastination, dread and fear of the future.

I was tongue-tied and taciturn. I had a nickname. Every body even the teachers called me “Battery”. You know it. Later my nick name was modified and everybody started calling me “Bats”. When this hit me my first urge was to smack somebody in the mouth. But there was no way I could beat up everybody in the school. I thought if they saw they were not getting any reaction they would get sick of it, but my speculation went a begging. In fact, whenever anyone called me “Bats”, I acted like it was my real name and just answered them very politely, however, agitated inside.

However, I lived in a joint family with senior cousins and other family members; I had none to discuss my daily predicaments, fears, doubts, success, defeats and other personal problems with. When I did some exercise in my own way and solve the problem I wished someone could see me doing that which none could do in the class.

In those days I didn’t possess the knowledge of maturity to fully understand these emotions. Today, it’s much easier. Today, I recognize one of the first feelings I experienced was anxiety. Since having been in this field, I also have come to know that there’s a world of difference between being a student and being a teacher.

Myself being a teacher and language instructor have seen plenty of incidents about children who have apparently, suddenly improved on how well they are doing as a result of an increase in their general feelings of self-esteem. And I have also seen other children who suddenly increased in self-esteem as a result of a particular achievement. Furthermore, it is believed that how children feel about themselves, surrounding -their self esteem has a close relationship with their conduct and to how they perform in school-to their achievements.

Amid everything else, we must seek to build the child’s inner strength as we attempt to improve his emotional response to his/her world because confidence feeds on itself, and unfortunately, so does the opposite of confidence…self-doubts.