Emotional troubles can and do negatively impact the motivation to achieve and contribute to society.
With time early emotional problems often develop into more serious and destructive behaviors. Children are highly sensitive to their internal and external emotional environments and influences on this environment to change in a positive direction can have lasting, effective impact. Intervention during formative years is essential since the influence of emotional memories become more difficult to change with time, analogous to how the ability to acquire languages changes drastically with maturation. Almost all of our children attend public school. School is one of the main institutions and influences in their lives and, in many ways, represents the investment in children that our society deems important.