Every pediatrician, child psychologist, and child psychiatrist knows this child: one week thriving, the next refusing to eat, developing obsessive fears, motor tics, or rage over minor frustrations. Parents often describe it as a switch flipping, saying, "It's like I lost my child overnight." For many families, this marks the beginning of months or years of searching for answers. Children are frequently diagnosed with anxiety, OCD, ADHD, or behavioral disorders, but according to children's mental health expert Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge, these diagnoses may not explain what's driving the symptoms.
Drawing on over 30 years of clinical experience and analysis of more than 10,000 quantitative EEG brain maps, Dr. Roseann believes one question is often overlooked: What changed biologically? At NeuroImmune Day, she will challenge clinicians to look beyond symptoms and consider how the nervous system, immune system, and brain interact when a child changes almost overnight. "When a child changes this dramatically," she says, "we have to ask a different question: not simply, 'What diagnosis fits these symptoms?' but 'What changed biologically that caused this child to change so suddenly?'"
Conditions such as PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome), PANDAS, Lyme disease, and autoimmune encephalitis can trigger inflammation affecting the brain and immune system, leading to dramatic changes. What looks like anxiety may be neuroinflammation; defiance may be a nervous system in survival mode. Researchers estimate PANS alone affects up to 1 in 200 children, yet many healthcare professionals lack training in recognizing it. Families often spend months moving between specialists before biological questions are explored.
Dr. Roseann emphasizes that healing begins with the nervous system. "When the brain and body remain locked in chronic survival mode, healing becomes much more difficult," she explains. Her clinical framework, Regulation First®, views nervous system regulation as a biological prerequisite for healing. At NeuroImmune Day, she will present on how chronic nervous system activation influences immune function, sleep, gut health, and emotional regulation, arguing that these systems cannot be treated in isolation.
For parents whose child changes overnight, Dr. Roseann advises trusting what they see and seeking clinicians who understand the brain-immune connection. Her forthcoming book, The Dysregulated Kid: The Parenting Playbook for Helping Your Child Find Calm in a Chaotic World (Page Two Books, September 22, 2026), offers practical tools based on her Regulation First® framework. "Families don't need more blame or behavior charts," she says. "They need practical tools that help them understand what's happening beneath the surface."
