Why so many posts from those who aren’t ND??

[Fleurbombeury]

I thought this section was just for those who are Neurodivergent?

i feel like so many posts lately are from parents who aren’t neurodivergent, looking for advice about their neurodivergent children.

I understand you want advice from neurodivergent adults but this section is just for us, not for NT parents, at least I thought so. Are you not able to post in one of the other special needs sections?

Just read the headline for this space.

for some reason this space is not just for neurodivergent people. I thought we had our own safe space but apparently not.

:/

Oh yeah I just see that as well I am sure it did used to say something different to that and it was a place for us 🤔

I think the SN children sections are much less visible/well known now. Or maybe it's more that the term SN isn't associated so much with Neurodiversity and people don't realise?

I think MN does need better signposting on these things.

It used to be for us ND members; however, judging by the heading, it would appear MN have changed it without any notice. Very poor of you @MNHQ to remove our 'safe space'

Why can't parents of ND children have their own board @MNHQ?

Even my employer had the foresight to have separate 'support groups' for ND employees and employee parents of ND children.

Shame on you @MNHQ.

What does the heading say? I thought it always said it was primarily for the use of ND mumsnetters but everyone can post but be aware of this?

Oh!! On this thread now I can see this:

Use this forum to discuss neurodiverse parenting.

That is new, isn't it?

Yes, it is new.

Does that mean neurodivergent parent, or neurodivergent children?

by that I mean is the child neurodivergent so including NT children

I am not a parent
I sometimes use this one to ask questions I would no want the whole site to see and judge but it looks like it is no longer for that

Yes I think it could easily be misconstrued.

Apologies - I'm someone who has used this space to ask about my daughter. I did this because I really wanted to try and get advice by some who is autistic themselves rather than another NT parent. But I apologise as this is not what the board is meant for - sorry 💐.

I will self report and ask for the thread to be taken down.

The forum "folder" still says that it's for us, but it no longer matches the thread header.

Well, it says "primarily".

For my part...I'm glad that it doesn't seem to invite the usual set of militant nobody's-as-autistic-as-my-child parents, but I'm also glad that partners of autistic folk also come in here and ask for advice. It's a vastly more constructive and welcoming environment in here...and I see that as a good thing. As I said in another thread, we've been begging the NT world to listen to us for as long as we've existed; it seems counter-productive to turn them away when they want to hear from us.

And every time one of them does come in here asking for advice or help in learning how their loved one sees the world, it's an invitation to make another ND person's live a tiny bit better.

Basically...the way I see it is...it's not a safe space because it's isolated from everyone else, but rather because the conversation is driven more by ND folk than NT folk. Or, to look at it another way, we're not the ones who're outnumbered in here ;)

EDIT: With that said, the "Use this forum to discuss neurodiverse parenting" is the very opposite of a change for the better. Yeesh, talk about not reading the room.

Hmm, I was just thinking of posting to ask for some advice about my son - my first thought was to post here as I'm ND myself so have posted here before, and I value the perspectives of the posters here more 😁 But I also agree that that isn't really what I thought this space was for, I would interpret "neurodivergent parenting" as being a space to talk about parenting as a neurodivergent person yourself, or would hope that's what it meant, I think it's something that really isn't talked about enough/enough support provided for. I was only diagnosed after becoming a parent as it totally blew all my coping strategies out of the water. Anyway I'm happy to ask about my son on the SEN page if that's better :)

Does anyone know if posts on the SEN board show up in active? That was another reason I wanted to post here, don't want all the AIBU type "autism is overdiagnosed/why do you need a label/ND is just poor parenting" responses that there seem to be daily threads about these days

It's not what we asked for, is it?

I'm not sure why I'm surprised really

They don't. That's why that section was created, and why posters asked for this section to be created.

You can opt in to see the Sen boards in active I believe, but they are hidden by default, that's always how it used to work. I wish these ones would work like that too but they don't - it's always invisible no matter what. I find that really difficult personally as with ADHD it's out of sight out of mind. The only way I can manage it is to subscribe to the topic and get notifications when people post here, but that's a bit annoying.

I think MN should change the way topics work entirely, honestly, changing it to be a bit more like Reddit - a core set of topics that new users are automatically set to view, with all the more niche ones available to opt into, and anyone can opt out of any topic. But the idea that there are more topics than the default should be made really clear so that people are generally aware (not just a single note on signing up that is instantly forgotten) that they can opt in and out of things.

Yeah but on the other hand, when it wasn't hidden we used to get NT posting horrible threads on comments, culminating in the phrase "hand-flapping cunts" so,,,

I know, I agree that it should be invisible by default. I just don't understand why they can't make it opt-in like the previous SEN children boards.

"hand-flapping cunts"

I hope that poster got banned. That's within the legal definition of ableist harassment.

I thought this was a safe space too 😰

One suggestion could be to report posts which are actually about children and where the poster doesn't specifically say something like "I chose to post here as I'm looking for input from adults with autism/ADHD"

Not because the poster has done something wrong but to highlight the issue to MNHQ?

Yeah, not "report to get it removed" but "report to get it moved to SEND board".