IndigoBell support thread

[betterwhenthesunshines]

I see from another member that Indigo Bell has been banned from MN. I would just like to say that it was her advice that led me to look into help for my DD. Without that I truly believe she would not have made the advances she has.

Indigo's views mat not have been proven scientifically, but she certainly helped open many people's eyes to alternative ways of helping their children. People could choose to listen or ignore as they wished. She always took time to help people who were stuck and frustrated. I miss her and MN is a poorer place without her.

AT the top of this page Our SN area is not a substitute for expert advice. While many Mumsnetters have a specialist knowledge of special needs, if they post here they are posting as members, not experts.
So I propose that MN reconsiders. Please.

I am another signing in to support Indigo.
I do find her tone at times evangelical but it is very clear to me that it is based on her experience with her children.
And as I am an adult, I can choose to take or leave what she says. So whether I agree or disagree with her is moot....she tells the story of what has worked for her children.

I am not here to be led by the nose; I choose to be here to read exactly that- what have others experienced for better or worse.

Without all the facts from both sides, it's not really possible to judge.....but I do feel shocked that Indigo is banned and I do feel that this (very supportive and valuable) board is being held to a different level of accountability by MNHQ.

Best of luck Indigo....I hope to see you back here.

I would also like to Indigo. she has pointed me in the direction of lots of practical things I can do or consider to help my DD. And as so many others have said here, you can take or leave the advice. lots of us do that. We look at the advice given, consider it and see if we feel it would work for us and choose or not to accept it. That is what this board is all about.
I think that it is wrong to ban her, and hope that her threads are not removed as some of the links to sites that I have found useful are there and I may not have bookmarked the actual sites themselves.

Could I suggest that all those wishing to support Indigo and encourage her to come back should in fact be contacting her since mnhq seem to be saying that she may be able to be reinstated?

And Indigo has offered a wealth of information and support on here, but sometimes we can get so caught up in our own bubble or world view that we forget to think about how others might perceive us, or how the feelings of others might be hurt, and I do personally think that for whatever reason, some of Indigos more recent posts could feel very critical, unsupportive or off putting to newcomers who have come here at the end of their tether and need a helping hand.

I'm rarely here especially now days but when i did need advice when my ds was going through diagnosis i feel indigo was always there giving very useful advice this is absolute rubbish how can you be on chat forum yet not be able to express yourself!!!!!!!!!!!!! isn't this like breaking of some sort of freedom of expression law?

count ten supports from me even hundreds!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Was it this?

"IndigoBell Fri 14-Sep-12 12:18:32

Dysleixa is a medical problem which is totally curable.

It is not an educational problem that can be helped by school.

If you are lucky enough to chose the right interventions and treatments for your child, you can cure him.......

If you leave him to school he will get worse and worse."

If so, I remember being a bit and , but I don't remember her ever saying that she was an expert. I can understand some people feeling bad because of it, but most people can understand that these issues aren't black and white and that one person's opinion is just that.

I don't know. It doesn't personally affect me emotionally as my son isn't dyslexic. I would also always challenge publicly- I don't do reporting posts. But people have complained to MNHQ so they had to consider their feelings, I guess. It would have been better to have the balls to be upfront, but that doesn't negate them feeling shit at the (pretty strong) implication that they're choosing not to cure their child if they trust the school and don't try (pretty expensive) alternatives.

I've shared a few threads with Indigo, probably on primary education and whilst I think it's very sad that it's got to a point where she felt she had to leave I can actually understand why people may have been unhappy about some of the things she said (or possibly more the way she said them) and why they might have reported to MNHQ.

My ds is dyslexic and we are pretty happy with the approach we took with him as it made a big difference to his life but I would never say he was cured (because it wouldn't be true), nor would I ever imply that people who didn't take our approach were failing their children. Sometimes it did really come across that way, and if you are a) scared and b) trying all you can then it's really not a great message to have to listen to. I'm not sure why she felt it wasn't possible to take a slightly more conciliatory line, but it may well have been because at times yes people were dismissive because the methods she was advocating are very much on the alternative side of things (that is not to say that they didn't help her children greatly or that they might not help other children too).

There is a difference between saying 'this is what helped us' and 'this is what you must do or else you are failing your child' and I think sometimes Indigo veered a little too much toward the later. Of course one of the problems with the way that Mumsnet is set up is that HQ will only hear the complaints and never the praise so they can't really take a balanced view.

I can see why some may get upset at what Indigo has written.

I absolutely don't believe Dyslexia is curable [nor is ASD] , I have read what Indigo has written before and have sat on my hands.

I think its commendable that a parent will go to such lengths to help their child but I get very uncomfortable at the suggestion of curing something that just is n0t curable.

I think the best thing a parent can do for their child is accept them and support them without trying to change them.

IMO children whos parents dont accept their diagnosis fare worse and IMO trying to cure is not accepting.

I'll get off my soapbox now, see that is why ive tried to keep it shut before.

My child is not Dyslexic he has ASD but the same methods have been suggested.

I can get why some may have been offended.

I think though that Indigo has always had good intentions.

Justabout you say:

"I think this would all be very different if MNHQ could point to a SINGLE post where Indigo said something along the lines of

"look, it's obvious innit, your child can't read because you haven't bothered to try to cure it like I did. Your fault."

But we haven't been reminded of a single post like that, because it doesn't exist, because IndigoBell is not a nutter or offensive or a charlatan or indeed horrible. Because she hasn't really DONE anything to warrant this kind of attack."

I would say here is the example you ask for:

" IndigoBell Fri 07-Sep-12 16:16:30

StarTail - your DD learnt to read, but still has dyslexia.

Her reading out loud is still fantastically inaccurate

Trouble is she got a spelling age of 9 at the same time.

had have a scribe to write her answers

If you're happy with all of that, great.

I wasn't. I wouldn't settle for those kind of results.

That's why I've cured my DDs dyslexia.

The significance of this post is not that she's learnt to read - almost all kids with dyslexia eventually do to some degree.

The significance of this post is my DD doesn't have any dyslexic symptoms anymore.

I don't think it's showing me much 'due respect' to say you don't believe in alternative therapies or diets when I've just told you they've worked for my DD.

DD didn't learn to read because of Toe by Toe or any other teaching method. She didn't learn to read because she matured, or because she wanted to.

She learnt to read because her brain fog cleared.

(And then all the teaching she's had for the last 5 years she could access)

You're selling your DD short by closing you mind to 'alternative therapies and diets' "

I don't think that Indigo should leave. I don't think it was wise of her, however, to issue MNHQ with an ultimatum. In effect, she said 'I'm not changing the way I post, if you don't like it, ban me.' Lots of people have done that in the past, and they've all been told (in effect) 'if you can't accept our decision, this obviously isn't the place for you.'

Indigo needs to realise that people don't necessarily have the resources or the funds to dedicate their lives to 'curing' dyslexia. In addition, so many parents fight so hard to get their child's dyslexia even recognised as such, that to then be told that if only they did more, tried harder, their child wouldn't be struggling as they are, is not an easy thing.

Indigo has said herself that the massive leap has come after removing dairy from her diet. So, she doesn't actually know that Tinsley House, Auditory Integration Training, have made a big impact. It could have just been the dairy, and also, without playing down the progress made, Indigo hasn't waited until her DD can actually read at her age expected level to report back. Her DD is still significantly behind, and until she catches up, it can't be said that she has been 'cured'. It is dangerous (in my opinion) to profess a cure to desperate people without a wide ranging evidence base, or at least without huge disclaimers that this is an anecdotal finding.

ABA is another area which requires significant resources (either in expertise or funds) and the impression that if you can't do ABA you've let your child down is equally harmful. I know that is an old subject, and after quite heated debating, the overall tone regarding ABA has, I feel, become much more measured, and there is an acknowledgement in most posts that it is not something that everyone can do.

Well I hope she decides to come back. I followed several of her recommendations and I felt that she had quite a balanced and modest way of sharing her ideas. I think she was one of the more convincing posters on these boards.

I don't think that she ever claimed that her methods were particularly affordable and I am surprised it has come to this. I liked the can-do way in which she tackled special needs and I found it very refreshing and learnt a lot from her.

It might just be that other posters felt frustrated by her ability to have afforded these treatments in a tough economy but that is hardly a reason for blaming someone who could easily have kept their knowledge to themselves rather than making the effort to share it for free.

I also think it most unfair to cherry pick snippets of heated debates and use that to demonstrate her pushiness out of context.

It's not unfair, when it was challenged that there was not even one post which could demonstrate MNHQ's position.

At the end of the day, MNHQ can ban us all if they want to. They've told IndigoBell what she needs to do to stay, and they've told her that if she wants to come back, they're willing to discuss. If her principles won't allow it, so be it.

I agree that was a fairly strident post - out of everything I've ever seen her post. I didn't read that entire thread.

However, whatever she said it is still just her opinion. People can infer from it what they will. If that was the post then I still don't see any reason for MNHQ to step in and tell her to moderate what she is saying. People on here imply ALL THE TIME that other people are doing a bad parenting job - you only have to look at some of the other boards.

Plus I don't read that post that way - she is just defending her view - in the case of her DD that everything she's tried has worked. 'Curing' dyslexia or not is a question of semantics and in my view not worth getting hung up about. Dyslexia is essentially a variety of a set of symptoms that someone at one point grouped together under a common name anyway. Whatever.

I don't think anyone can hand-on-heart say that they are doing the maximum that they could ever, possibly, conceivably do for their child, SN or otherwise. Surely it all comes down to our individual balancing act. Some of us would move counties/sell our houses to fund treatment and tribunals, others wouldn't for various reasons.

I am sure that there are even options left unexplored by Indigo. We can always do more. Just because her constraints might have appeared to have been less tight than mine or yours, that was not a reason to have felt inadequate. I never saw it like that.