special needs section

[Gab2]

Why have the special needs been moved to "education" on this site? I don't understand it because in moving it there it makes are children less important than any other category. Our kids arent an "education" they are children just like all the other categories of children. I'm very annoyed about this especially because our chat threads disappear in with the huge category of regular education. Can someone please explain??

Yes I know. That's why I didn't understand what OP was saying initially. If you look at the full topic list, then it's easy to find all the special needs topics.

It wasn't changed because of non-experts posting on SN threads. The problem was that people were reading thread titles like "How do I toilet train my 5 year old?" or "My 7yr-old is awake until 2am and then gets up at 6am?" and were diving straight in with very unpleasant posts about how the OP was a terrible parent and clearly very lazy and neglectful etc.

The poor OP had usually posted in desperation and the nastiness was incredibly upsetting for them. When you're getting by on 2-3hrs sleep a night when your child is school age, you're avoiding going out because you can't face the glares and stares every time your child has a public meltdown, and your family insist that your child has no SN and it's just bad parenting - those responses can just feel like the last straw.

This place has grown enormously since then and it may well be that it's no longer necessary. If you ask MNHQ they may well decide to reverse the original decision to hide the SN threads from the Active Conversations page.