Ep. 174 – Identifying and Treating Your Children’s Mental Health: How We Can Be Their Greatest Support with Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge

I am happy to have a good friend and an incredible pediatric advocate joining me today! Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge is a mental health trailblazer! She is the founder of The Global Institute of Children’s Mental Health, and a media expert, who is changing how we view and treat children’s mental health. Her work has helped thousands reverse the most challenging conditions, including ADHD, anxiety, mood disorders, Lyme Disease, and PANS/PANDAS, using proven holistic therapies. Dr. Roseann has often been featured on dozens of media outlets. 

The impact of the pandemic is undeniable. It has brought about a lot of change globally and has created many new challenges for everyone. Parents are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, and the landscape for children has altered considerably over the last fifteen or sixteen months. Children have been impacted from an academic, social, and even a psychological perspective. As a result, we are experiencing a surge in mental health problems across America in children of all ages. 

In this episode, Dr. Roseann talks about how stress is affecting us as parents and explains what we can do to support our children. She also shares some stats and explains what parents need to look out for regarding anxiety, depression, and suicide in young people. Stay tuned for more!

“No one is immune to the stress that is impacting kids, families, adults.”

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

• Some signs of chronic stress or anxiety in our children that we, as parents, need to look out for.
• Things you can do to benefit your children’s mental health.
• Maternal mental health is the number one predictor of children’s mental health.
• Dr. Roseann explains how to help your kids create the inner confidence and resilience they need to succeed in life.
• Using stress to develop resilience.
• Teaching your kids coping skills and stress tolerance.
• There are benefits to experiencing failure.
• Dr. Roseann talks about neurofeedback and biofeedback and explains what they do for our brains.
• How to limit your kids’ screen-time during the pandemic.
• Some signs and symptoms of long-term effects of COVID.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge’s bio:

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge is a trailblazing Psychologist, Pediatric Mental Health Expert, and the founder and director of The Global Institute of Children’s Mental Health and Dr. Roseann and Associates. Her Connecticut-based center has helped thousands of children and adults reverse the most challenging conditions such as ADHD, Autism, anxiety, depression, concussion, learning disability, Lyme Disease, and PANS/PANDAS. 

Dr. Roseann treats these conditions using proven holistic therapies such as neurofeedback, biofeedback, psychotherapy, and nutrition using her trademarked intensive two-week intensive 360 Reboot™ Program. Her mission is to teach parents how to reduce and reverse their child’s symptoms using proven natural therapies and her book, It’s Gonna be OK!™, and course, The Get Unstuck Program™: The Step by Step Way to Change Your Child’s Mental Health, gives parents the tools for lasting change. She is also the author of Teletherapy Toolkit™: Therapist Handbook for Treating Children and Teens and co-author of the best-selling book Brain Under Attack: A Resource For Parents and Caregivers of Children With PANS, PANDAS, and Autoimmune Encephalopathy. 

She has been featured on dozens of media outlets such as The Mel Robbins Show, Fox News, CBS, NBC, PIX11 NYC, Cheddar TV, FORBES, USA Today, Yahoo News, WebMD, Business Insider, PARENTS, The Week, and The New York Times. Dr. Roseann is a Connecticut Certified School Psychologist, a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Certified Integrative Medicine Mental Health Provider (CMHIMP), and a Board Certified Neurofeedback Provider (BCN). Dr. Roseann serves on the boards of the Northeast Regional Biofeedback Society and is a Lyme Connection Task Force Professional Advisor.

Connect with Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge

Dr. Roseann’s website 

Dr. Roseann on YouTube

Dr. Roseann on Tiktok

Get Dr. Roseann’s book here

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow

• Follow on Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn
• Check out Cynthia’s website
• Check Out Dry Farm Wines: www.dryfarmwines.com/cynthiathurlow

About Everyday Wellness Podcast

Welcome to the Everyday Wellness podcast with Cynthia Thurlow! Cynthia is a mom of 2 boys, wife, nurse practitioner, and intermittent fasting and nutrition expert. She has over 20 years experience in emergency medicine and cardiology, but pivoted to focus on food as medicine. She loves to share science-backed practical information to improve your overall well being and is grateful to be interviewing leaders in the health and wellness field.  Her goal with Everyday Wellness is to help her listeners make simple changes to their everyday lives that will result in improved overall wellness and long term health.

Roseann: I am so excited because whenever you and I talk, it’s always just like full of mind bombs, and I love you, and I love talking to you. I’m so grateful that you’re in my life. So, everyone gets to hear about these conversations that we have, and we’re both on a mission to help women in particular. So, moms– for both of us. So, I’m grateful for this conversation.

Cynthia: Yeah, and I’ve really been looking forward to connecting with you for many, many reasons. But largely, because as a parent, the past 15, 16 months has really changed the landscape for our children and I would love for us to really start our discussion talking about ways to support our children. Obviously, I have teenage boys, but we have had some very in-depth discussions, and not only about the impact of this pandemic, what it’s changed for us in our lives personally, how it’s changed for my children from a social perspective, academic perspective, psychological perspective. I know, last year, I reached out to you with some concerns. So, I’d love for you to talk about the landscape that we are navigating as parents. For those of us that have younger children, all of us have been impacted. It’s not just parents with children that can watch the news and can absorb what’s going on and get fearful. So, let’s start there, and then we’ll expand our conversation.

Roseann: So, there has been an undeniable impact on everyone in America and across the globe from the pandemic. We’re seeing an uptick, a surge in mental health problems across all ages. You’re right, Cynthia. This is affecting young kids, teens, young adults. I always call kids, I think [crosstalk] 28 and under, and–

[laughter]

Roseann: -I have a 50-year-old at one point and I’ll be like, “That’s my kid.”

Cynthia: Mm-hmm. They will always be our kids.

Roseann: They’re always our kids. But parents have had a huge impact, and I want to say that it’s really the parents that have been hit hard, and we know through research, The American Psychological Association does a beautiful survey every year called ‘Stress in America.’ There’s always lots of information about how it’s affecting us at home, with our employment but no surprise, 70% of parents report significant stress due to the pandemic, mostly from homeschooling their kids, and social isolation. So, there’s so many parts about why people are affected. I think that the lack of socialization, the disruption in routine, just whammies of disappointment, a cultural shift, I think, there’s just so many changes and big things that have happened in the last year or so. Education disruption, and not getting ideal types of learning, and then you have parents that are working at home in the same time, and we’ve just been whammy. So, overwhelm and exhaustion are ruling the day, and even though we’re moving into a different time, people are feeling more hopeful, whether what you feel about vaccinations, it doesn’t matter. The rates are going down for everybody right now. At least across the United States or countries where people are getting vaccinated, so that has created a sense of hopefulness as people ran to enter the world.

In the beginning of the pandemic, I was talking about re-entry panic syndrome, because people were so anxious. Then, I started now talking about re-entry anxiety syndrome. Now, I think what we need to talk about is re-entry socialization. [laughs] So, there’s a lot a lot going on and we can dive into– I gave you a lot information. I’d love to talk about some of the stats around what’s happening with anxiety, depression, and suicide rates amongst young people as well as– here are the stats the parents need to look for, because I think parents are often missing some of these signs, and I’m all about educating people, which is why I get out there and do all of this stuff, and have these conversations because nobody is immune to mental health issues, and I think the pandemic has highlighted that.

Cynthia: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So, I’m in the Washington, DC suburbs and from March of last year to May, there were days I would cry in the shower out of frustration. I didn’t want anyone in my family to see me frustrated, because I kept saying, I have to put on this bright, happy face for my kids, reassure them, tell everything’s going to be fine, despite the fact that everything is shut down. I’m grateful that I feel like now is people are able to resume some of their normal activities, perhaps your children in your area were back in school this past spring or winter. I know there were parts of the country that were in school the entire year, and I think that’s so critically important. My children just got back to the physical classroom in March, and I noticed a tremendous uptick in their behavior and their moods. They’re teenagers, let’s be honest. There’s a lot of moodiness in my house. There’s just a normal developmental phase for them. But what would be some of the signs for a parent that they need to be looking for? Because I know, even, I reached out to you out of concern, out of something, I was seeing out of one of my children, because I didn’t want to miss something.

Here’s the other thing. For those of us that have boys, most boys don’t communicate the same way that maybe a girl would. So, for me, I have one talkative boy who talks about his feelings very open. One is little more introverted, keeps things a little closer to his heart. So, what are the things that we as parents need to really be cognizant of, that we need to be engaged within our children? I think for many of us, we’ve spent so much time with our children in the past 15,16 months that we can assume even with good intentions that maybe behavior that’s unusual for them, we might just make excuses for it. So, what are the things we need to look out for?

Roseann: Yeah, and thank you for sharing, because it doesn’t matter what you got going on at home, where you live, who you are. Again, nobody’s immune for the stress that is impacting kids, families, adults. Just Dr. Ro to put on her geeky research hat because I love– I’m a big research nerd. In my book, It’s Gonna Be OK has over 40 single page– a single-line citation [crosstalk] of research. Because I like to you know, just let people know that holistic therapies are super effective, and also that you can trust this information, and also, let my peers know that. There’s a lot of great information and research they’re not looking at, and we need to really create this change, because prior to the pandemic, things were in a crisis. So, nobody’s immune to the effects of chronic stress, and I know we talked about it on this podcast, but I also want to say because we think about chronic stress as an adult, and kids can have the same effect. Let’s talk about this as a nervous system effect.

We want our autonomic nervous system regulates our stress response. The parasympathetic chillout state, I call it the hot tub state, okay? That’s where we want to live, Cynthia’s is laughing–. That’s where we want to live people. We want to be in this hot tub state. But when stressors happen and they can be real or imagined, and stress can be good or bad, and I’ll explain and give you some examples. You start creeping up into the sympathetic stressed out. So, SS, sympathetic stressed out state, and there’s only three possible responses once you hit maximum capacity and you’re hyperstressed, activated, fight, flight, or freeze. You’ll see this in kids’ behavior. So, let’s talk about what we’re going to look about. You can have a super verbal kid. Both my kids as you can imagine are chatterboxes. [laughs]

Cynthia: No. [laughs]

Roseann: But one of my kids is actually shy? You know what I mean? I’m like, “Where did this kid come from?” But he did, and he’s there, and he just needs to know– he’s like his dad. He’s like, “I need to know you’re my people before you get full John Carlo.” That’s how my husband [crosstalk]

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: I have so much respect for that. So, we think about these academically bright kids. You can have a five-year-old. It’s amazing and they can talk about the Presidents of the United States or spew out sports statistics. But it doesn’t mean they have the words for their feelings. If we’re not living in a house like a therapist house and have those words that they’re able to connect to their sensations. they’re just not going to be as fluid with that. There’s ways to connect to that. I talk a lot about it in my book, It’s Gonna Be OK. But we can talk about it right now. So, first of all, they’re in when it’s stress, anxiety, OCD, depression, whatever is going on, we have internalizers and externalizers and it’s a continuum. So, internalizers as Cynthia talked about her son is more quiet, he will withdraw, he will maybe be a little more sensitive to things, they might be more tearful, and then our externalizes are kids that are angry. They might be verbally angry, they might be punching walls, they might tell you to F off, they might threaten to harden themselves or other people.

Then in between is everything else. So, externalizers get help, internalizers typically go a very long time before they get help and I like to share this statistic wherever I am, because it’s like a holy guacamole statistic. It takes 11 years from the onset of a problem– the mental health problem before you get appropriate help, and that’s according to NAMI in 2019. This is not a surprise to me people. Because people come to me every day like the best moms and dads, and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m able to connect the dots now.” So, what are signs? So, we talked about internalizers and externalizers, and across the continuum. Kids show us their behaviors. They don’t tell us what’s going on. So, you’re going to see stomach aches, you’re going to see headaches, you’re going to see somatic issues, that’s what they’re called, and you’re going to see things like sleep problems, you’re also going to notice a change in behavior.

I think Cynthia, you alluded to this, that in the pandemic, parents were like, “Oh, my gosh, my kid is different. He was chitter-chatty, and now he’s sitting in his room, and he won’t come out,” or “had a huge change in friendships,” or “is now cranky and sensitive all the time where they were like, just an easy to parent kid.” So, I have one kid that I got to be my A game parent. I got another kid where he could be raised by wolves, and he’d be fine.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: [laughs] When my easy kid complains or is a little difficult, I’m like, “I better put on my A game parent,” You know what I mean? Think and I better pay attention to him. So, it’s important to meet our kids were at and also recognize, you know, when it comes to parenting, there’s no right way, there’s no wrong way, it’s a lot of just being consistent. But I think parents miss the opportunity to really provide clear about what your family’s values are, and really just have things that are like the anchor of the family, and then each kid needs a little bit of a different parenting. So, like I said, my older kid, I have to– It’s got to be Dr. Ro has to be mom, extraordinaire when I’m with him, which means I’ve got to have more patience for him, you need things front-loaded. No surprising on him. [laughs] I have to give him– he needs to say no before he needs to say yes. So, that’s Max, and so, I always give him an opportunity to say no, and I’ll be like, “Think about it. You’re 16. I just want everybody to know all those things are smoothing out.” [laughs] So, and he’s starting to really think about other people.

Today, was one of those moments, Cynthia. It’s so little–, it’s such a little thing. But my Max has chronic Lyme disease. He got it when he was 22 months old. Life has not been easy for him and I feel grateful for all the lessons in our family that he is brought to us. We have this amazing gluten free cupcake place. So, my son went to a doctor’s appointment. I was like, “Let’s get some gluten free cupcakes,” and I had one cupcake, which was a different cupcake. Everybody knows I like mochaccino, but I had the S’mores. So, Max had said, “Do you want this mochaccino?” I said, “You know what? I already had a cupcake. I don’t want it.” Well, you know what he did, Cynthia? He got up, he’s a teenager. They inhale food. He took it and put it in a plastic bag, and set it aside for me. I woke up today and he had set aside that cupcake. I think I just about because it’s so little. But when your kid just is so thoughtful like that. That’s what matters to us is thoughtfulness and being kind. It’s one of our family values. So, when kids are struggling, you should always celebrate the little things. You really, really should, and it sounds a little, but for Max, it’s just a big deal for somebody who struggles with anxiety, and he was able to– he’s just getting so calm and regulated. It’s really nice.

So, look for changes, look for stressors, look for physical things. My highest-level students do things like vomit, always have gastrointestinal. I mean, like 98% of the time, and they’re not going to be like, “Hey, mom, feeling pretty stressed. I think, I’d like to talk to a therapist.”

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: So, they might not even understand that they’re really struggling. Kids can have intrusive thoughts, they can have thoughts of wanting to harm themselves, I think that’s one of the biggest surprises is that we’ve seen such a dramatic increase in kids going to the ER now for suicidal thoughts– suicidal thoughts means you’re thinking about it. You don’t have a plan for it, which you’re having some concerns and you’re saying thing– you might say things to others, like I feel like killing myself without a plan. So, appropriate thing is to seek care and really get a professional to evaluate it, and it’s often such a shock to parents, because internalizers are internalizers. They’re not saying it out loud for them to get to that point of high distress, please know, it’s been bubbling for a while.

Cynthia: No, it doesn’t just happen overnight. I think that we’re both so fortunate that we have very open, honest relationships. Even though, I have boys, I tell them all the time. My husband, I have very close relationships. But obviously, a lot of our children’s behavior is a reflection of how their parents manage and mitigate stress. One thing that I know has been particularly helpful for my kids is, I have one swimmer and one football player, and not being as physically active for both of them was a bit of a shock. Because one kid who’s used to being in the pool 12 to 15 hours a week, and all of a sudden wasn’t for months on end, and obviously, the gyms were closed, and so, one thing that I know has been particularly beneficial, and I’m sure you probably would agree is physical activities. So, making sure much like when my kids were little, a real little like toddlers, I say, if they fell asleep really fast, and I knew I did my job well, because they got enough exercise. So, it’s really no different with older children just making sure that they’re moving their bodies every day.

Sometimes my kids are forced to walk the dogs. Oh, my gosh, there’s such a big issue with walking the dogs every once in a while, but I always tell them, like our bodies are conditioned to move. It’s really important that we’re doing that every day. I think that physical activity piece, we know has a lot of benefits for brain health and we were actually talking about this prior to recording. Can you touch on that a little bit because as we’re touching on beneficial things and I’ve got a whole idea of weaving in all these different topics I want to discuss with you? So, those are signs of things we need to look out for as parents, and then let’s talk about some of the beneficial things we can do that irrespective of where you live or what environment [crosstalk] and you can do for your child’s mental health benefits.

Roseann: Well, and let’s just piggyback on exercise. So, when kids are in exercise, I like to think about yes, we should think about what’s happening physically. They’re not getting the endorphins released, their body is not doing all the things that it’s supposed to do, detoxification and lymphatic drainage, muscle building. We know through research that even one 30 minutes of moderate exercise, one improves your performance on cognitive tests. So, we know that cognitively because kids in the pandemic, their parents were noticing this, problems with focus, problems with motivation. So, your frontal lobes start working more appropriately. You do three 30 minutes of moderate exercise three times a week. If you have ADHD, your symptoms decrease by 40% just three times a week. So, so much goes on. You’re missing socialization without exercise. You’re reducing your hands on activities, especially when replacing with technology. Exercise helps us to regulate our entire nervous system. It gives us balance so that we’re able to handle stressors.

So, when we make it a priority, this is a mental health, this is a stress inoculator, exercising. But when we make it a family activity, it gives us an opportunity. When I like to talk about how to talk to kids about mental health and let’s tie it into exercise. So, I talk about the four Cs I’m conversing about mental health. Its connection, comforting, communicating with your kids, and being conscientious of what you’re saying. So, connection, particularly with teenagers, guys, comes through activities. When the body is moving, the mouth moves. If you’re going to jump into your kid and treat it like the Spanish Inquisition, they’re going to repel you. But if you’re out there walking or doing something fun, you’re just more likely to have that communication. It’s a place of comfort, it’s just a routine, it becomes a family value and you know your kids may [unintelligible [00:19:59] with you to get their butts out there like your dog, but that’s okay. [laughs]

Cynthia: Yeah, [crosstalk]

Roseann: Just like, “Guess what, you won’t have some computer time, get your butt out there.” This is our time, and if you haven’t already got a sense, I’m super playful part of the Hodge motto was to have fun and be playful, and it’s such a great diffuser. Even when my younger kid, John Carlo, who’s so easy, I see him getting difficult and I was like, “Are you going to hulk on me?” It’s like Bruce Banner.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: He will start cracking up, and then the words come, and then he’s able to talk to me about what it is. You just have to have that way, and I feel better. If I was like, “Hey, knock it off. I don’t need to hear a [unintelligible [00:20:48] mouth. Ba, ba, ba, ba.” We just create these friction points. So, communication is super, super important, and please know really, you can bring the fun back in your life. Because I feel like nobody’s having any fun, and it should come in these little moments. Then again, just being super conscientious about what you see, so that’s where it all starts. It also starts, how can parents really help their kids with their mental health? Well, the number one predictor of kid’s mental health in their life is maternal mental health. So, not trying to make you feel bad, because we shouldn’t feel bad, we’re terrible to ourselves, we tell each other to you know, we tell what we say to ourselves is like thousand times more than any other person, right, Cynthia?

Cynthia: Yeah. 100%

Roseann: 100%. So, put your oxygen mask on, give yourself some jarring self-care, because you’re going to be a better friend, you’re going to be a better partner, you’re going to be a better employee, and you’re going to be a better parent. Your kids get to role– they’re seeing you role modeling. They’re learning. So, our kids learn more from what we say than what we do. I mean, not from what we do than what we say. So, yes, they listen to us, but if we’re incongruent in what we’re saying from our actions, which can easily happen when we’re stressed out. So, prioritize these lifestyle components as Cynthia always talks about healthy eating. My kids, they understand– my kids will ask random questions like, “What nutrient is in here?” Because it’s just part of that conversation. If they say to me, “Oh, I’m feeling really tired.” I’m like, “What would be a good food choice for you right now.” They just start empowering them. I don’t say you better eat this. I put it back on them. So, we know that good mental health, we have maternal mental health, we have physical activity, but we want to develop in order to be a successful kid at school, at home, and in life. They’ve got to really have inner confidence and resilience. So, it’s those little opportunities that create that. So, you have to let your kid you got to parent your kid to be autonomous.

I talk about, I have something called the champ technique for raising kids. The A in champ is parenting to be autonomous, because we want our kids as tough as these moments are for now. We want to provide comfort, we want to connect with them, we want to communicate, we do all those things. You also have to help your kids develop these coping skills, and it’s through these moments that really helped to build it. It’s super powerful. You’re not going to develop a whole new parenting strategy. You’re just going to shift your language because I don’t want parents to feel any more overwhelmed that they are instead, I want you to flip that dialogue and think about, “Wow, I actually have so many things that I can do, and all it takes is these little shifts that can create these massive, beautiful changes in my kids mental health and my family mental health can be better.”

Cynthia: There’s so much to impact there. One thing that you touched on, I was talking to Jon Levy, who’s this incredible, neuroscience, biological researcher, and we were having a conversation about fragility, and what are some of the predictors of fragility and how stressors at certain points in our lives can actually be really beneficial. He was indicating that teenagers and young adults, that’s a time in their lives, if they have a particularly stressful situation can actually give them the opportunity to get stronger. So, this whole fragility model is something that I’m a huge advocate of that we want to foster relationships and foster children that are able to respond, and instead of having a trauma like being in the pandemic and having a turn into a lifelong issue, having them come out and develop strategies and abilities that maybe they didn’t have before.

I always think about the World War II generation that was probably one of my favorite generations to take care of as a Nurse Practitioner. I always found that they were so resilient because they went through so much and so, they just stood up, and instead of being fragile, they were anti-fragile. So, I wonder, what kind of research is going to come out of the pandemic in terms of the impact on the mental health and physical health of our children. Hopefully, for those of us that are trying our darndest, be as open and honest and forthcoming, whatever is age appropriate for our children that that we can embody them with the strategies and the ability to be able to come out of this stronger. I tell my boys all the time, I’m like, “Listen, we’re getting into a point that things are starting to get back to some degree of normalcy.” Like we’re actually flying to Montana next week. I have a speaking event, and we’re taking the whole family because it’s such a beautiful part of the country. It’s the first time all of us have been on a plane. My kids haven’t been on a plane since 2018, I haven’t been on a plane since March of 2020, same with my husband.

So, can we touch on the fragility piece, because I think that’s you’re definitely navigating around that. But I find it utterly fascinating and it’s much like a hormetic stressor. A little bit of stress is good, too much is too much, and can be non-beneficial to an organism. But let’s touch on that because I think that particular item is of tremendous interest to me, when I’m thinking about our children, and the net impact on the entire population.

Roseann: Yeah. Let’s talk about– we talk about the World War II generation or people that have gone through a really rough time. My dad was a child in Italy in World War II, and was very, very, very poor. He was the kid that didn’t have shoes. They would throw bombs in the tunnels where they lived, and he’d have to run, he tells all these stories. My dad is like me. We’re just like stress layers. We’re like, this is what we do. Cynthia knows me. So, I’m always like, “Okay, what’s the benefit out of this?”

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: I process it and I move on. But in mental health, there are protective factors and risk factors. This ties into what we’re talking about. So, one of the biggest protective factors in mental health is having coping skills. It’s the basis of resilience. I talk a lot about something called a resiliency mindset. When we talk about resiliency, we often don’t talk about– it’s about managing stress. So, there’s three parts. It’s how you view, manage and recover stress. Kids today, Cynthia, my kids who are struggling the most, and I think about mental health issues as a dysregulation of the nervous system. Not that there isn’t clinical anxiety, and OCD, and depression, which is holy moly is that on the uptick. But it’s about having dysregulated areas within your brain, but also in our brains communication system. I get to see this and QEEG brain maps, we could talk about that. But kids are dysregulated very easily and they can show breakdowns in one of those three areas. When people work with me, I help them to understand that, and then we can measure progress based on, well, okay, is the recovery getting better. Because it’s about having the braking system. So, our emotional brain, we often only think about the limbic system, but it also involves the braking system of the frontal lobes and something that hardly anybody talks about your occipital region, the back region of your brain, it’s your emotional– e-brake back there.

So, no matter what happens, if your brakes aren’t working, this area should flood. When I look at people’s brains in these brain scans, what happens is, I’m seeing that people don’t have resources. They don’t have the braking system, and then they don’t have an e-brake that would flood you and regulate your nervous system. Good happy brainwave comes out called Alpha. They’re like literally just in constant activation. So, when we talk about fragility, when the best people I talked about myself and my dad being stressed layers, I just don’t view stress in the same way. It starts with that. So, my body from a neurological perspective, I don’t start the cascade of everything that goes on, your hormones, your neurotransmitters activating because I’m like, “Ah, I got a speeding ticket. Ah, It was long overdue.”

[laughter]

Roseann: So, happened in the pandemic. True story. This is when we need to, how can we change this for our kids? How can I get my kid to be a stress slayer? Well, we need to role model it. Number one, okay and trust me, you got plenty of opportunities every hour on the hour from something fallen out of your fridge to your cat throwing up on the floor, or whatever. There’s plenty opportunities to show your kids, how to– We’re not ignoring stress, we’re not pretending it doesn’t exist. Even when you’re super stressed out, you have to be like, “Kids, holy guacamole.” Super stressed out. Last week, we’re at a friend’s house and I was cracking up because my teenager– Everybody knows me knows I got a potty mouth. I’m the only person in my family with a potty mouth. My parents didn’t have potty mouth and my teenager was saying, “Oh, you hear mom swear once, no big deal. You hear her swear twice, you better run.”

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: I was like, “That’s pretty true backs.” [laughs] But it doesn’t happen that much. So, how do we build this? So, we want to create these moments for teaching coping skills. I recently, my easy kid, John Carlo, he does not forget things. He’s the guy that reminds me, I have a damn good memory. He reminds me, “Don’t forget, you got to do this in the morning, and pum, pum, pum.” So, in one week, he had never ever done this. He forgot his computer for school. He goes to super cool science school, and he does coding and programming. He’s been able to do this since he’s like six years old. So, I said, “Hey, your cousin can go pick it up and bring it to you.” By the way, his school is like 30, 35 minutes from my house on the highway. So, it’s far. So, I said, “Hey, it’s one time deal. Don’t forget it again. Okay? Because your cousin can do it.” He’s like, “Oh, thank goodness.” The same week, he forgot it again. So, he’s so funny, because he knew. He was like, “What time is your first meeting, mom?”

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: I was like, “My first meeting is at 11.” He goes, “Oh, I forgot my computer and you have plenty of time to go and pick it up.” So, I was like, “Hey, here’s the scope. I’m not going to get it, I told you it was a onetime deal” and he goes, “You don’t have a meeting till 11” and I said, “I’m busy,” and we talked about it. He was mad. He told me he hated me, Cynthia.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: He doesn’t normally [crosstalk] do that, I was like, “Honey, I understand you are mad,” and dah, dah dah, dah, dah, dah. So, I was like, “Look, think of it this way. You’ve never forgotten it before. Okay?” Then, my opportunity was, even though, it’s not, I was like, “What else could you do? ” I didn’t say, oh, poor baby. I didn’t say– I was like, “Wow, that’s really nice that you decided to tell me you hate me.” Again, we’re very playful and we laugh. But I use this as an opportunity to do that. So, he wanted pulling himself together, I didn’t try to over parent, I didn’t try to overcome for him, and I didn’t even have to go the first time. But again, you got a super easy kid that doesn’t ask for something. Every once a while, you just got to do something extra. But if I had run home, what would I have taught him? Oh, he made himself a checklist, Cynthia. So, he never forgot his computer ever again on a Friday.

Cynthia: That’s fantastic.

Roseann: I didn’t even have to ask him. He developed his own coping mechanism to do that on his own and he figured it out. He’s not going to forget it, he’s going to take that lesson, and I didn’t have to bubble wrap him. So, that’s really what you need to do. You need to teach kids those coping skills. So, your kid gets upset and they’re crying, and you’re like, “Wait a second, the last time this happened, you did what?” I don’t remember. You’re like, “Hold on a second, take a breath, think about it, I did this. Okay. What do you think you should do?” You don’t say let me go and do this for you. You want your kids to find their own internal resources. That’s one of the biggest shifts that we’ve negatively I’ve seen in these 30 years of working with kids and families, is we are over parenting our kids. What’s happening is stress tolerance is like, I’ve never seen brighter kids, great grades, people, grades don’t define mental health, not be able to cope with little disappointments. These little disappointments everybody are the practice for the biggest disappointments in life. Your girlfriend breaking up with you, you didn’t get the job you wanted, you didn’t get matched to the MD program you wanted to be. Whatever, you know what I mean? A hurricane hits you at the wedding. I mean big things. That’s how we get ready for those things. That’s how I always say, “I’m the captain you want on your ship when it’s going down.” Because when it goes down, I am in my zone. I am really like a slayer of stress. I’m like, “Okay, what you’re going to do?” I go into a heightened mode of being able to problem solve. You know, that came from my parents parented me very independently, and they let me make failures. So, I think that’s really, really important. We talk about fragility, we’re really talking about no stress tolerance.

Cynthia: No, and it’s interesting because when I was speaking with Jon, it really, oftentimes when I’ve connected with a podcast guest, I will really reflect on our conversation because I really value, this is one of my favorite things to do is to podcast and connect with other experts, and be able to share your knowledge and others knowledge with the podcast listeners. But the fragility piece really stuck with me and much to your point, I was an ER nurse in inner city Baltimore, I worked in cardiology, as an NP for 16 years, I was always that very calm, cool, collected person, and I generally deal very, very well with stress. I’ve had two instances with each one of my children over the last couple months, where I had to let them sit with their mistake. My parents did a lot of things well, and then they did some things that were not so well.

Roseann: They all do.

Cynthia: But our parents– exactly, our parents do the best we can. But one thing my parents did and my mother in particular, better than a lot of other families that in children, I was friends with at the time, my mother would say things to me like, “I could make it easier for you, but you wouldn’t learn anything.” I thought, she was like the meanest, most awful person. But what it taught me was, ultimately, I’m responsible for myself. I had one instance where a kiddo did not do as well as he wanted to on an exam. I said, “Did you connect with your teacher to find out what you got wrong?” He was starting to head down the direction, “Well, can you reach out to my teacher, and can you do this?” I said, “No. I mean, it sounds like you made some honest mistakes and you went from an A+ to an A in algebra, and the world will go on and this is just one semester, and this is not the end of the world,” because he was in his head thinking about the long-term impact. He won’t be able to get into that magna high school, does this mean this and then another day, my older son, he’s 15 years old, he’s smart, he’s responsible. Well, he just decided, because we’re going to be moving that he didn’t need to stay on this list for his football team.

Well, we showed up very early in the morning for practice, and there was no conditioning practice, and it meant that both parents had gotten up early, we had gotten in the car, and I just said, “This is a one and done. So, you are now going to be part of that email list until we move, because if this happens again, there’s going to be some type of a repercussion, because you’re not respecting my time, and you’re not respecting your dad’s time.” So, he really understood and he came home and immediately reassigned himself to that. But allowing our children to be a little bit more independent. I think, at this helicopter parenting that I’m sure is done with good intentions, is going to make our children not very resilient, they’re not going to be able to deal with disappointment, and disappointment is a part of life.

I know we’ve had private conversations where I’ve said, I’m so glad that X happened to me, because what came about is I changed paths. I didn’t go to law school. I ended up doing something completely different. So, I think it really leads us to the path we’re meant to be on, but we have to look at those as teachable moments and not necessarily as a negative thing. It’s like, “Yeah, that sucked. I didn’t go to the college I wanted to or maybe that relationship didn’t work out or some other–” We’ve been largely stuck in our homes for 15 or 16 months. But it’s how we frame those experiences, it’s how we look at them, that allows us to look forward, and I love that you’re a part of my tribe, and you are another person that is calm in the storm, because we need people like this, just like we need people who are completely the opposite, it’s how we balance out society. If we were all that way, then we probably wouldn’t get a lot done. Because we like to tell people like, “This is what you need to do next. [crosstalk] about personalities.

Roseann: When we have uncomfortable situations, our anchor is our body. Our body cues us to these different sensations. We often in therapy over focus on feelings. I’m not saying feelings are important, but our body gives us a cueing. I do a lot of what’s called somatic therapy. It’s about teaching people to reconnect to their body, whether they are under stress or had a traumatic event, and we want to disconnect. So, when kids don’t have stressful experiences, they don’t recognize those feelings, and sensations, and thoughts that come through. Parents are so well intending, Cynthia. They really want their kids to have the best. My immigrant parents wanted me to have the best. Like for them, it was education. They never thought that I wasn’t capable, so, they let us be super, super crazy independent, and they let us do all kinds of things like jump on the train in the 80s to go into the city in New York when it was full of criminals.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: But they knew they raised kids that had great common sense and they knew we were in a pack, and guess what? It doesn’t happen. So, they gave us plenty of opportunities, but when we teach kids, “Hey, listen, that’s what grief feels like. hey, that’s what depression, sadness feels like.” They’re able to recognize it, process, and address it instead of being overwhelmed by it because they’ve never experienced it. There’s so many parts about experiencing failure. Just like you said, your son, he made a mistake. You were like, “Hey, you didn’t get in this screaming match for them. You were like, here’s the deal. Now it’s on you.” The great part is, that’s developmentally appropriate. He can manage his own email, you can be CC’ed on it, and he’s going to have to develop some resources to do it on his own, and that’s going to serve him beautifully in life. He wasn’t stressed out by it. He found a way to do it.

I can say that we grew up in the 80s. Our parents weren’t all over us about these kinds of things. My parents like, “Oh, you got a test today? Okay. “You studied?” Okay. “Yeah.” Sure. I don’t even think they asked me if I studied. They just assumed I was going to do the right thing. Maybe they should have been checking Tony and Philomena, because I read a lot of books when I was in class and what had nothing to do with class I did okay. But seriously, we do need to give our kids these chances of failure because it’s so important for their mental health. If your kids are so dysregulated, when you think about that resiliency mindset how you view, manage, and cope with stress, if you have kids that recover from stress, you kids just don’t recover, they literally are tantruming, they’re stuck, they’re angry, they’re resentful, and it goes on for inappropriate time.

Let me tell you, your kid, a 100% has a dysregulated nervous system, and they need to think about what are things clinically that I can do. Is this, do we need to do? We should be doing things every day like breath work, and meditation, and yoga, and then you could do more advanced things like biofeedback, neurofeedback. You can do other things to help your child that has nothing to do with a pill. Because a pill is not going to fix things. The basis of my work is regulating the nervous system [unintelligible [00:41:45] with new learning. That is 100% why people come from all over the world, because it’s about teaching you another way to cope, to manage it, and giving you that internal confidence because we always look for external resources. It’s just a Band-Aid. You’ll never really get better, and in fact, you go from band-aiding one situation to another. As a mom, I just want my kids to be happy and to be kind, nice people just like Max saved me that last– saved me my mochaccino cupcake, which I’m going to get back to him by the way, when I get home because he’s a teenager and still sleeping this morning.

[laughter]

Cynthia: So, so much value in what you just said, but you did talk a little bit about some of these bio hacking, and as anyone that’s a listener, this is an area of interest of mine. It’s something I touch on with most of our guests, let’s unpack what is neurofeedback, biofeedback, and what does it do for our brains? Because I think this is fascinating and I’ll just interject to say that, many years ago when I was a new nurse and I worked as an ER nurse in Baltimore, some of the most interesting characters were the neurologists. It was largely because they were very cerebral, but we really understand such a little amount of what goes on with our brains that I find this is now fast forward 20 some odd years later, and now we know so much more. So, I would love for you to touch on this because I think this is particularly relevant and really valuable.

Roseann: Yeah, so, this is my 30th year in mental health and [laughs]

Cynthia: Hard to believe, you’re so youthful.

Roseann: Well, thank you. It’s good skincare as Cynthia has taught me. It’s a lot of drinking of water and I was raised holistically. We always think Italians are [crosstalk]

Cynthia: We were crunchy before we knew what crunchy was.

Roseann: Yeah. I’d actually have to hide that I was crunchy. The chicks on my bus stop are like you eat what and you do what.

Cynthia: Did you eat [crosstalk] organ meat as a child?

Roseann: Of course, we did.

Cynthia: Well then, I tell people, I’m like, I thought my mom was so weird, but we had like [crosstalk] organ meat, and oh yeah.

Roseann: Oh, my God, my mom makes the best turkey stuffing with the organ meat. It’s like, “Oh, it’s really, really good.” We grew up with two to three vegetables at every meal. Pasta wasn’t something we had every night. We eat a lot of, Italians call it, [unintelligible [00:44:13]. a lot of greens, a lot of things like that, and always had a massive, massive garden. My parents have a 2400 square foot garden.

Cynthia: What?

Roseann: They have to have somebody come and help them.

Cynthia: Of course, they do. That’s massive.

Roseann: [laughs]

Cynthia: Oh, my God.

Roseann: It’s a lot of good stuff. So, let’s talk about neuro and biofeedback because you got me all excited, I’m such a geek on this. So, for you know, I’ve only done integrative mental health because when you go to the research people, it’s not medication that comes up. It’s what is called integrative. So, in my book, It’s Gonna Be OK, I dive into these eight pillars of mental health. Parenting is one part, and as well as these brain-based things. So, people don’t know about neurofeedback, it’s 50 years old, biofeedback is probably, I think, 70 or 80 years old. Tens and thousands of research studies, 3000 peer reviewed studies with neurofeedback. These tools are used for both to address clinical conditions you name it. If I haven’t talked about it, please know that it’s there, headaches, pain, drug addiction. I do a lot of brain injury stuff and as well as for optimization.

Sometimes, I just work with executives, all the major athletes do it, the space guys are all mandated to do before they go to space. It’s pretty incredible, because if anybody who knows me, I get a lot of shit done and it’s really, because I eat incredibly well. But also, I do a lot of neurofeedback, and it takes you to a higher level of consciousness. But when we talk about, you know, what’s the difference? So, biofeedback is learning how to take control of an autonomic function. So, your breath, your heart rate, your skin temperature, your muscle, why do you mostly do it? You mostly do it for stress management and pain as well as to gain muscle control for specific things like having bladder floor issues and a whole host of things. It’s an awesome thing, the devices are very inexpensive, it’s super accessible, I can’t say enough good things about it, and you can do with any age. I started doing heart math, heart rate variability training with my little guy when he was 12. So, it’s super, super easy.

Now, neurofeedback is training the sub-conscious to get into a regulated state. So, if you heard me before, brain dysregulation shows up along this continuum to internalizing to externalizing behaviors, whether you want to address it at behavioral level or it’s a clinical condition, you just about can reduce or reverse pretty any clinical symptom with neurofeedback, and there’s thousands of research studies to substantiate. It’s always the piece in the holistic component. You must incorporate lifestyle changes, remember the basis of my work, regulating the nervous system typically with brain-based technologies, but other things too, because lots of free things to do, and then new learning. So, you still have to come in with new learning. So, for most people, the process starts with what I do. I either do, if you’re local to me, you know you drive in, you do something called QEEG brain map, or if you’re work in another country, because we do remote neurofeedback, too. We have clients in like Asia, we send you the equipment. We do a brain check, we look at certain areas of the brain because they can read raw EEG data. So, it gives you a visual representation of the brain and then I’m able to make protocols on it.

So, what the heck is neurofeedback and what does it look like? Super, super, super simple concept. Nothing comes through the wires, you’re hooked to a computer, and your subconscious brain has to start working and regulating the brain in two to three seconds. From the first time you get hooked up, neurofeedback will start regulating your brain, because it wants this reinforcement. What we do is, we use technology. It plays movies and you get visual and auditory feedback in your subconscious. By the way, the number one movie in the office is Back to the Future regardless of age.

[laughter]

Roseann: So, you get to see Doc Brown and Marty McFly doing the DeLorean, and you literally your subconscious brain is like, “Okay, I want this reinforcement.” It’s just an exercise for the brain to take you out of a dysregulated state, regardless of clinical condition– regardless of there’s no clinical condition, and you just want to optimize your brain. The thing about neurofeedback and biofeedback just like working out. It’s going to take some time. You don’t do one session and you’re buff at the gym. So, most people are doing at least 20 sessions. If you’ve tried neurofeedback and you only did five or 10, and you’re like, “I didn’t notice anything” is because homeostasis, your brain does not want to change its setpoint. Same thing about weight. You really have to start mixing it up. So, it’s pleasant, it’s safe, there’s 50 years of research to show that there’s not one negative component to it. It is so ridiculously effective. When people come to me, they’re often like, “I’m so afraid. How could this natural thing work?” I’m like, “Well, you’ve tried eight medications and it didn’t work.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: So, this has the research. Let’s do it. Let’s give it a chance,” and then they’ll do 20 sessions and they meet with me, and they’re like, “Holy cow, this works so great. Why didn’t I know about this?” I’m like, “This is why Dr. Ro, does what she does, and gets out there,” because there’s no need– I’m not an anti-medication, I just am an anti-overuse of medication. And 70% of psychiatric medications with kids under age 18 are used off label, which means there’s no research to substantiate their efficacy for that thing. So, we need to be concerned. So, super powerful and really what does it do? When you get in a regulated state, your brain is working. So, I can change the function over structures and the neural networks, and what’s awesome about the neural networks are the super highways between sites. The most famous person you could think of who had the best neural network is Einstein. So, he had 400 times the neural networks in one area over the corpus callosum. I don’t want to get too geeky on you. That is the superhighway connector of the brain and he had a genetic defect there, that allowed him to process that. So, you–

I do a lot of work on the neural networks and anybody who’s really connected to themselves, particularly my adults are like, “I can just process so much faster,” and I’m like, “Oh, trust me, I know. It’s really pretty cool.” So, it’s for those bio hackers or you’re like, “Holy moly, I’m so stressed out. I just can’t get a hold. The nutrition is not doing it for me, the exercise isn’t doing for me.” First of all, don’t abandon those things. Those are the foundational components of the nervous system, which includes your brain, and you’re going to help with neuroplasticity, you’re going to help with those are clinically proven to reduce every clinical condition you could think of, but the top ones anxiety, depression, and OCD. But neurofeedback, it’s pleasant, it’s easy, it just takes a commitment. You’re going to need to do it two or three times a week and changes are lasting. The research studies as far as 10 years out show that most people sustained the brain changes, and not only do they sustain them, the brain continues to improve and change on its own, which is pretty cool.

So, every day, we help people lose clinical diagnoses. I know nobody wants to talk about that, because they get all upset when I say reduce and reverse mental health issues and conditions. Everybody’s brain is different. Some people will and some people won’t. But when you adopt and utilize evidence-based approaches that are totally grounded in neuroscience, there’s no way not to get better. There is no way, the only limiter in that is the person’s belief system that they can’t.

Cynthia: I think that’s really incredible and ironically enough, I had my first neurofeedback session a few weeks ago. There’s a local friend who just started this business. I had one session and I remember I went home, and I had the best sleep ever. I was like, “Could that have been from one session? and she’s [crosstalk] like, “You’ve people that report that they have this relaxation factor.” So, if you’re mastering your brain, if you’re facilitating, support of the autonomic nervous system, more parasympathetic than sympathetic, more rest and repose as opposed to fight or flight that really makes sense.

Now, I want to be super respectful of your time and obviously I’m going to have to bring you back, because there were so many other rabbit holes we could have dove down, and some of the things that I want to make sure I quickly touch on that people were asking about. Number one, I had a couple followers’ questions. Number one was, how do I limit screen time in pandemic and social distancing? That was the first question. I’m sure you probably have a canned response, because probably get asked this a lot.

Roseann: I have a great answer– so, my answer is this. Use technology to limit. We use a device called Graphion. There’s all different kinds and basically, again, to try to empower our kids to be autonomous, our kids, we tell them this is the amount of time they have, a Wi-Fi time. That is all they get. They have to budget and manage it, and once it’s over, it’s over, and the only way that my kids can get extra time is if they do physical activities in our house. We’re making our kids do all the labor around the house. [laughs] So, they’re moving like wood piles and things like that, and they just do it. They’re like, “Hey, oh, mom, I ran out a Wi-Fi time. What if I get all the garbage and I do this, and blah, blah.” I’m like, “Sounds great. Boom.” It stopped all the friction because everybody, I want to talk to I just did a big training for a corporation and this is what the CEO wanted to talk to me about.

Cynthia: [laughs]

Roseann: Like how to stop this with their kids. You know what I mean? So, I think that’s the number one thing you can do and really insist that they are more worried about what they’re missing by being on too much technology. Technology is here, you got to get the moving exercise way, but that’s my number one tip.

Cynthia: Okay, so, out of curiosity, your teenager, how much time does he get? Is it per day or per week?

Roseann: It’s per day.

Cynthia: Okay.

Roseann: I want to say, he gets five hours. So, he’s got a long list of things he’s got to do, and he just honestly just does them now. It’s rare that we’re getting in any argument, which is, you know what I mean?

Cynthia: It’s a beautiful thing.

Roseann: It’s a beautiful thing. And I’m not saying that some right amount you might be shocked by that now. The other question is, what is the right amount? Well, prior the pandemic, they kept saying two hours, two hours, two hours. The average that people are spending teens 13 to 18-year-old in 2019 is 7.22 hours.

Cynthia: Yep, that makes sense.

Roseann: That’s the average kids are spending every day.

Cynthia: And that’s average. So, you think about 50%– roughly 50% are spending more time than that, and that makes complete sense. Now, I’m going to have to bring you back to address this other question. But one quick question about the net impact, someone has contracted the virus they were exposed to COVID, developed COVID. Even if they had mild symptoms, what are some of the big signs for you of the long-term effects? If someone cleared the virus, they felt bad for a week or two. What would be things that for you would be setting off alarm bells that they need to have– they require further evaluation, so, these like long haul COVID survivors?

Roseann: Yeah, so such a great question, because I’ve been talking about this for months, and I am seeing cognitive and psychiatric issues resulting post-COVID. I specialize in something called PANS and PANDAS, and autoimmune encephalopathy. That’s a whole other conversation. So, when you have an infectious or toxin trigger that does a sudden onset of a psychiatric or cognitive issue, and they use the P is supposed to stand for pediatric. We’re now opening that up to adults.

Cynthia: Wow.

Roseann: So, what do you need to look for? So, all of a sudden, your kid looks like they’re ADHD. I’ve had kids with psychosis after, and this is happening to adults, too. So, please, you know, know that. You want to look for a shift that doesn’t seem to fit and COVID can be a slow decline. Every day, they seem to be more unfocused, the reading is really off. If you see that change, trust your gut, and look for ways to support that. I like to talk about different supplements that can help things like bacopa, but you want to make sure it’s appropriately detoxed out of the body. I won’t go into every detail. I talk a lot about it in my book and that’s a whole chapter, detoxification is a pillar of mental health. But you want to make sure that you’re up moving, you’re using things like parsley, and cilantro, and other tools in your daily to help detox. This is just good stuff. Then, I do a lot of obviously neurofeedback and PEMF. That’s a whole other topic. I totally a PMF junkie. To help to get the nervous system back online because no healing can occur if your nervous system is in a hyper stress activated state, and especially, so much in infectious disease. That’s probably the top reason why people come to me, they have psychiatric issues, and they’re working with amazing providers that they can’t get better, it’s because the nervous system is stuck on.

So, if you see signs and symptoms, don’t think all of a sudden, your kid now has depression, when there’s no history. They can be depressed, but the result, it can be from a medical issue. Find somebody who can help support you, neurofeedback providers are all over the world. You go to bcia.org, to find a certified person. Like I said, I work remotely with people as well. But you want to make sure that you are helping their brain to get back online, because from a brain perspective, what COVID does, it looks just like Epstein-Barr by the way on the brain map. It comes in and shuts everything off, Cynthia. So, I’ll have a brain map and literally, there’s no connectivity, there’s no processing working, it’s like, I always try to explain to the parents and the adults that come in that it’s like your brain is constantly on ways and there’s no direct route. So, it’s very, very stressful and draining from a processing perspective, which is why you look like you’re ADHD or something’s taken you five hours that used to take you a half an hour. So, when you see it, believe it, and take action on it.

Cynthia: Well, that’s a beautiful explanation. I’m so glad you’re doing the work in this area in particular, and I would love to bring you back, and I could just geek out over brain detoxification, the glymphatic system, and all those things. The more I learn about the brain, the more fascinating I find it. So, let the listeners know how to connect with you, how to find your book, where are you on social media, tell them all the things.

Roseann: Well, you can find me as Dr. Roseann pretty much everywhere, and that’s R-O-S-E-A-N-N, and doctor is Dr. That’s on YouTube, that’s on TikTok because I think I’m really funny, and I have some TikToks, and my website is drroseann.com. My book is there and you can go to it, It’s Gonna Be OK to get my book, and there’s some free resources and gifts. When people buy the book, you can go to Amazon too. Even though, this book is written for parents, it’s the same pillars for mental health across. I’m just so committed to kids because it’s so much more of a crisis in mental health and we can do better for them, and parents need this information, and I’m all about, you’ve heard me, you can hear how much I try to condense and give a lot of value to people, because I’m a special needs mom too, and I know what it’s like to be distressed, and we are only as happy as our happiest kid. So, I just want parents to know that. There’s no magic bullet, but there’s lots of great research to show us exactly what to do. That’s what this book is about. It literally tells you exactly what to do.

Cynthia: Well, thank you for all the great work that you’re doing. I’m so blessed to have you as a friend and a colleague, and you’re a mental health warrior, and as you stated, there is a pediatric mental health crisis. There aren’t enough providers and I’m so grateful that you and your team are providing these kinds of services to pediatric populations.

Roseann: Well, thank you, my friend. I’m grateful for you and thanks for having this conversation and I hope people have aha moments and share this. What I always ask is, if you know or care about anybody who has a child that might be struggling or maybe your friend is a mom who’s struggling, share this podcast with them in a loving way to say, “I got so much out of this. Please do.” Because if we do, we get to help so many more people which is why Cynthia and I do what we do.

Cynthia: Absolutely. Well, we’ll definitely be bringing you back to talk more about topics, and if you’re a listener, and you particularly love this episode, definitely let us know so we can bring Roseann back sooner rather than later.

Presenter: Thanks for listening to Everyday Wellness. If you loved this episode, please leave us a rating, and review, subscribe, and remember, tell a friend. And if you want to connect with us online, visit the link in the show notes.