Do you think it's a good idea to have a non-public, password-protected area for special needs parents to vent?

[JustineMumsnet]

Following on for the discussion on this thread we'd like to know your thoughts.
For a little while now some of our special needs parents have said they don't feel Mumsnet is working for them in certain situations when they need to vent/rant/talk honestly about their situations and we've been thinking about whether there's anything structurally we can do to help. We feel very strongly that the special needs boards are a core part of Mumsnet and indeed for most of the last six years have been an exemplar of what we're all about - a place where parents can gain support and tap the experience of others to make their lives' easier. That said, we do understand that special needs parents are under extraordinary pressure and therefore more than most could do with a bit of privacy to vent when needed.
One idea that has been raised is a private, password-protected area for special needs parents on Mumsnet. This area would not be automatically visible to all but those who wanted to join could do so - though obviously you wouldn't have to join to discuss special needs - the existing public boards would remain. Clearly this is a break from the norm for Mumsnet and in some ways it feels an anathema because as we all know Mumsnet is an open forum and free access to all who need it is one of our underlying principles. But it's clear the current format is not working for many and if it's not helpful then we need to change things. We've thought about it a lot and feel it could be worth a try.
So what do you think? Special needs crowd, would this work for you do you think? Would you use it? NT parents how do you feel about it? Is it worth a go?
Let us know...
Thanks,
Mumsnet Towers

I haven't read the whole thread as it's huuuuge! But I'd hate any area of MN to be password protected - Georgina's idea is great IMO

well...i am happy...i've just posted in SN to 'test' the new way...and the only way you can find the post is too choose to go to special needs...

so i am happy justine....i have missed mumsnet.

Peachy & Fattie (I feel odd using that abbreviation of your name) - I am not sure how both your suggestions/ideals could be accommodated together.

To leap on every abusive comment and use suspension etc is fine, could help calm things down quite well - but, then, if someone is having a bad day - and you guys probably have more of than I do, then wont that make people prone to outbursts? Thus removing the sanctuary we come to when having a bad day. The tolerance and understanding will go by the wayside surely? On top of that - how would so many posters know who the folk on the SN board were? Unless you walked around with a label on your posts/name - surely defeats the object of integration?

Peachy - you are truly lovely, and always have been, but I am a little affronted by the need for reciprocity in order to take 'non SN' peoples problems more seriously.

I agree that all posters need to stop and think before posting, and use much more tact AND tolerance in future.

I hope things start to settle back down soon.

I have not read the whole thread, but just wanted to say that I really do not want a password protected area here-as many of the other SN posters have said, we have somwhere else to go for privacy.
However, I very strongly feel that the SNs threads here should remain open to anyone because of the valuable information they provide. I wonder how many people have been able to recognise their childs problems as being caused by, for instance, AS after reading these boards? They would not have necessarily looked for information about it because thay may not know anything about it, but seeing the problems described might just ring a bell.
I certainly gained a huge amount from the boards myself and would not wish to deny that help to others just gettong a DX for their child.
I still think some kind of reminder that you are posting on SNs would be helpful, thus preventing the inadvertant tactless comments.

oh I know I've come late to this but I've only just seen it and I really, really object to people being able to 'edit out' the special needs threads in active conversations

I don't post a lot on special needs but I do sometimes and I do want it to be part of my mn experience - it's part of my life. Until I started on mn I saw myself as a normal parent who happened to have a child with CP. Now it seems I am pigeonholed as the Mother Of A Disabled Child - and people are even allowed to edit out my experience of parenting by clicking 'without special needs'?

Mumsnet is a - who described it once as this - a 'love and knuckles' family? There's more black humour kicking around here than anywhere else I know, and if it creeps into the sn threads I can ignore it there as well as anywhere else

I agree with the previous poster who said what do we do now, have 'no bottle feeding' threads and 'no controlled crying' threads?

imo if people want to go off to msn then that's fine. people go off to msn all the time to discuss things, whether it's trading recipes or telling one another who HugeMistake is or whatever.

let them. But I want to be part of the whole thing, not sidelined off because I'm Difficult - I don't want that for my child and I don't want that for me

I'm actually really, really about this

So how about my earlier suggestion of a "without bottle/breastfeeding" option? Those threads get similarly heated and most of the time I would just rather not see them!

Cappuccino - it is the parents of children with SN who have lobbied for this - I can't see one parent of a child who is NT saying they wish this to happen. Quite the opposite in fact!

So it is more a case of people wanting to be able to go and discuss things relevant to SN off the main board, rather than anyone wishing to airbrush those threads of the main board.

Sorry - I should of course have said the parents who only have children who are NT.

There are of course many parents who have children who have SN but also have other children who are NT.

soapbox some of the parents from sn have lobbied for this

some

I certainly haven't

Cappuccino - yes I understand that - I was concerned from the tone of your post that you felt it started because people wanted to shunt you off the main board, so I was only trying to say that that wasn't the case.

I do thoroughly accept though, that the parents of SN children have expressed very different views on the matter.

it was my understanding after a particularly nasty thread that people told some parents who have children with sn if they wanted to rant etc - to go elsewhere. Those parents have now done that. From my dim distant memory it was more parents who felt they were missing out on sharing with parents of children with sn who tried to find a solution whereby those parents could feel they could stay posting on mn.

I think removing it from active conversations makes it better. Certainly not foolproof but I hope better.

As to the ranting and venting which is what saves the sanity of some people that is now down elsewhere as was suggested some time ago.

Eidsvold - from my recollection it was a tiny minority of parents of NT children who posted on that thread who suggested that - but I think the thread has gone now so I can't go back and check whether I am right (or at least I can't find it).

No-one, ever, has said that the SN board should be passworded - the idea was to create, as well as the public open access sn board, a little 'side yurt'. And I believe it was offered as a spossible suggestion by MN....rather than having been lobbied for, iyswim.

And many parents of sn children have said they wouldn't necessarily advocate a paswordrd area, anyway - so I think the potential for 'them and us' effect of this debate needs to be kept as minimal as possible!

A lot of people have supported the idea of taking sn out of active convos because of the number of times SN issues have been taken up by 'the masses', without people realising that it is actually a SN issue. This has happened a few times recently, in this busy bsuy board, and led to some very unfortunate (aka distressing) misunderstandings, and left some parents of sn children feeling ever more exhausted.

I'm not speaking as a parent of a sn child here....but as an observer. (ds's brand of sn is not in the frame for the level of misunderstanding and relentlessness that other parents experience, and I am not in whatever the current more private arena is.)

Lots of groupings of people here use 'backstage' communication - especially MSN - I don't feel at all 'slighted' or excluded by that - it's a natural development of a huge open public forum.

I have only just read this as well as the linked thread. I would be sad to see the children with SN threads go since I feel I have learned a great deal from them. However, I do understand the reasons why some parents are pushing for this, particularly in the light of the utterly vile Charlotte Wyatt thread which frankly is the most offensive I have ever read.

But isn't that all part and parcel of life? It is disgraceful that there are rude people who hide behind cowardly name changes to vent their biased and ignorant views, but the fact remains that these people exist and hiding behind a password protected site will probably do more harm than good.

We should never be afraid to speak out, we should never hide our children for fear of what people might say, because it is only by confronting society that we stand a chance of changing it.

I don't have a child with special needs but I have a brother with severe learning difficulties and I have a nephew with Downs Syndrome. My brother is also black and a white girl with a black boy can still attract stares let me tell you! Especially when that black boy appears to be drunk. But it has never stopped me from being seen with him, from challenging people's views.

Don't hide away with your children. Be proud of who they are! I think it is more than helpful for other parents to have knowledge about the conditions that your children have, so they can educate themselves and their children. If you segregate yourselves then you just encourage ignorance and therefore bias.

As for the rude posters, they will only get to you if you let them. Rise above it. They are in the minority so why let them win the day?

i have no problem with a special private SN area.

But, the Charlotte Wyatt thread which is one of the ones which has most upset the SN parents was in the In the News section. Not SN. So how would a separate SN section actually help with that?

And, from what I gather, one of the other recent threads which particularly upset people was in Chat.

So if those threads which people are citing as particularly upsetting weren't in the SN sections, how will it help to make the SN section more private?

Donnie - believe me you do not have to have a child with Sn to be totally repulsed by some of the views being expressed on that thread - by a tiny minority.

agree, soapbox .

Agree that taking special needs out of active convos is a good idea.
Not so keen on a special needs forum with open membership. If anyone is free to join, that seems to negate the 'safeness' of this forum. How will you police who joins? Not possible. Inevitably,arguments will erupt just as they do on the rest of the threads.

Also, call me paranoid, but I am worried that some people could use the SN forum for thinly veiled personal attacks on non SN forum members, feeling more confident that their comments will be met with sympathy and the person/people they are sounding off about will never see the posts.

Having said that, I don't know what the solution is - a heavily moderated SN forum perhaps so people who join do so strictly to discuss SN issues? or is that unfair?

VVVQ that's not what I meant, sorry I meant, I would make a more positive effort not to get so hung up in my little world and to go out from the Sn threads, where I tend to hang out. NOT that others issues shouldn't be taken seriously, iyswim? But to make more of an effort to interact, to integrate. To not, when I see a thread about fruit shoots get an overwhelming urge to type 'well I'd be glad if sds drank anything' when I do actually get the nutrition argument.

I have no problem with the idea of tough love either, as I don't like aggressive posting at the best of times. But I think MN has worked for years up to now, and it's just a bit of a readjustment of values that is called for.

Does that explain it better?

Agree that taking special needs out of active convos is a good idea.
Not so keen on a special needs forum with open membership. If anyone is free to join, that seems to negate the 'safeness' of this forum. How will you police who joins? Not possible. Inevitably,arguments will erupt just as they do on the rest of the threads.

Also, call me paranoid, but I am worried that some people could use the SN forum for thinly veiled personal attacks on non SN forum members, feeling more confident that their comments will be met with sympathy and the person/people they are sounding off about will never see the posts.

Having said that, I don't know what the solution is - a heavily moderated SN forum perhaps so people who join do so strictly to discuss SN issues? or is that unfair?

I think the mooted idea of the forum was so that parents of sn children could vent about their lives - not other posters - without feeling, for example, guilty that they are saying 'bad' things about their children, to go into the darker questions that haunt them, private details about children when they need advice, and all without the need to explain - to even the most sympathetic other poster - but just to vent amongst people who have been there.

By all accounts MSN is the traditional medium for personal attacks, isn't it ? (I don't have MSN so couldn't possibly comment ). But, in general, parents of SN children frequently acknowledge the help and support they get from a wider community of MN-ers...which they will still get because (now everybody, don't make me have to change my name to BluInTheface here!):

THERE HAS BEEN NO SUGGESTION, AT ANY TIME, TO REMOVE THE OPEN PUBLIC SN BOARD.

Message withdrawn

Personally i think active conversations should just be for chat. i posted something quite personal to me about ttc (ok nobody would recognise me from it in real life, but still) and I hate the thought that any old tom, dick or harry could look at it, and not somebody who would go into the conception thread specificall because they are going through similar experiences.

Socci, I find it frustrating that I can't post about "NT children who just eat chips because their parents know no better - is Jamie Oliver's approach the right one, or is there another way we could be tackling this because society will have rather a large number of obese people in it in 20 years time and that's not ideal" for instance, because I don't want to upset anyone who has a child with SN and who is having nightmares with their diet.

I would never judge a child with SN or their parents for their diet. But to say that almost seems patronising?

So I've just stopped bothering to post much lately because I can't remember to fill my posts full of "clearly I'm not talking about children with SN" every time I post and I don't want to upset anyone either through missing that out and looking callous, or adding it and looking patronising.