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High-performing people like consultants use anxiety as fuel. It helps us push harder, solve problems faster, and achieve more. In small doses, that’s helpful to keep us moving.

The challenge is that anxiety is also a signal from the nervous system. If we never learn how to manage it, the same thing that drives performance can eventually lead to burnout, overwhelm, and unhealthy habits.

And whether we realize it or not, our children are watching.

They see how we respond to pressure. They learn how to handle setbacks. They absorb our relationship with stress long before they learn how to manage their own. 

That’s why I was thrilled to speak with Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge, author of The Dysregulated Kid. For more than 30 years, she has helped children and families understand nervous system dysregulation – the connection between stress, emotions, behavior, and performance. 

Her work is built around a simple but powerful idea: you cannot teach, lead, or parent a dysregulated brain. 

In this conversation, we discuss resilience over achievement, the signs of stress in children, and what you can do to help kids build the coping skills they need to be happy and successful.

For any parent-consultants out there, this one’s worth a listen.

Many parents use grades as the benchmark for whether their child is doing well. Is that the right thing to watch? 

Dr. Roseann: I think one of the biggest mistakes parents make is using grades as the benchmark of mental health.

What parents should really be paying attention to is whether their child can regulate their nervous system and whether they have coping skills. Can they manage stress? Can they solve problems when things don't go their way? Those are the skills that matter.

Our kids come to us with problems all the time, but if your child doesn't know how to manage stress and you're always their life preserver, they're going to have a lifetime of problems. And I couldn't say that louder.

We worry about what our kids are going to become, what grades they're get, whether they're achieving enough. But what happens when they leave home? What happens when they're in college, in a job, or in a difficult relationship, and you're not there to help them?

The reality is that every child is going to face challenges. The question is whether they have the ability to navigate them.

So instead of asking, "How are their grades?" I want parents to start asking, "How do they handle stress? Can they problem-solve? Do they know how to regulate themselves when things get hard?" 

How can parents tell the difference between normal behavior and something that might signal a bigger problem? 

Dr. Roseann: The first thing I want parents to do is rethink behavior as a clue. All kids dysregulate. Every child has moments where they're angry, emotional, frustrated, withdrawn, distracted, or overwhelmed. That's normal.

What starts to concern me is when those behaviors show up with intensity, frequency, and duration.

If your child is always irritated after school, if every conversation becomes friction, if they only seem to find comfort through devices, if you're seeing focus issues, emotional outbursts, avoidance, rage, or anxiety over and over again, that's when I start paying attention.

It's not about a single bad day or a rough week. It's about patterns.

I'm also very concerned anytime there's a sudden onset of a major behavior change. Kids don't typically change overnight. If something shifts dramatically, I want to understand what's driving it.

Is there bullying? Is there some kind of trauma? Is there a physical issue? Is there something happening in their environment that they're struggling to process?

The key is to look beyond the behavior itself. Behavior is communication. 

You talk a lot about avoidance. Why is that such an important issue for parents to understand? 

Dr. Roseann: I think one of the greatest mental health challenges we have today is that we're teaching our kids to avoid stress, avoid discomfort, and avoid hard feelings. But that's not what we want to do. 

There's a difference between avoiding something that's genuinely not right for you and avoiding something uncomfortable. 

A lot of people avoid things because they don't like how it feels. Adults do this. Kids do this. 

One group where I see this all the time is very bright children. 

Highly gifted kids are often used to things that come naturally to them. They don't have to struggle very often, so when they encounter something that's difficult, they hate the feeling.  

It creates anxiety, frustration, and big emotional reactions. And eventually it can lead to avoidance. The problem is that avoidance limits growth. 

When we help kids learn how to regulate their nervous systems, they become more willing to try hard things. Parents will often tell me that after their child learns these skills, they're suddenly willing to do things they never would have attempted before. 

That's because confidence comes from learning that you can handle difficulties. 

We don't want to remove every challenge from our children's lives. We want to help them regulate themselves so they can face those challenges and grow from them. 

That's how resilience is built. That's how coping skills are built. 

What We Can Learn from Dr. Roseann Capana-Hodge: 

🚨 Chart crimes!

This is a strange topic to graph.

But it’s also common sense to use red for heat and blue for cold.

Remember, use colors with intention...