A plea to those lucky posters who have not walked in our shoes

[BusynMember]

A simple "I'm sorry" is probably more helpful than advice.

I speak as somebody going through a hard time now with my very disturbed grown child. It's very hard to understand walking in our shoes if you haven't. Lately, in my opinion we've had some insensitive posts, probably not on purpose, but again until you walk in our shoes, you can't possibly relate or give helpful advice.

I try hard not to answer posts if I have no experience with the situation. Also, posters who are not from the U.S. or Canada, please also respect our cultures and that we may do things differently because we don't have any other options.

Thanks for reading this

 

[accmama]

It might be helpful if these boards were not viewable by the general public. Perhaps changing the settings so that only members can see the posts would help. I just realized that I can see all the boards and posts without being logged in. I know it wouldn't deter everyone, but it might be better to require logging in before reading.

 

[BusynMember]

I think that's a good idea. Nothing is worse than coming to our safe place and seeing judgment about our choices, just like we hear all the time from those who have kids who don't do these things and are NOT on the forums. It's not like I share my story with too many people as it is and when somebody comes here and belittles how I have managed to survive or assumes we are NOT doing enough for our grown kids, it is devastating to read.

I wish people WOULD read the forum first and have it sink into their heads what we have gone through to bring us to the points we are all at and for those who are culturally very different than us, perhaps there is a better safety net in place where you live for criminal children who can't live with family, but we don't have that in the US and sometimes we have the horrible choice of allowing our kids to be homeless before they kill us (either because they are making us so sick or because they are dangerous). In the US it is expected that individuals will care for themselves. Many of this don't have t he money to support our grown children away from home, even if we'd wanted to.

If somebody has not had a grown kid stand over you shouting obscenities in your face or putting holes in the wall or threatening to hurt you and your other loved ones...don't tell me that I should be more caring and let him come home and not detach emotionally. Please...a simple "I'm sorry" is enough if you feel the need to post anything at all.

I wish only members could post.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I wish only members could post.

You must be a member to post.
Guests can only read.

But... if we required membership to read the forums, we would have almost no members.
Many of us were "lurkers" for a VERY long time before posting anything.

JMO here, but I think it would be helpful of we were required to declare our "circle of culture"... e.g. North America, Europe, etc. Not even to the country level, but it does give some clues. And yes, I think we can all learn more "cultural sensitivity"... it's one of the challenges of the internet.

 

[accmama]

You can be a member and still lurk. I just hate that our private info and stories about our children is publicly available to everyone who uses google and accidentally lands on this forum. As of right now, my support network is so thin this is all I have so I'll continue posting but I do keep that in mind every time I post.

 

[InsaneCdn]

You can be a member and still lurk

On that basis... I would NEVER have joined the forum. And I suspect there are others that feel the same way. I
do not join forums unless I have some way of "getting to know" existing members ahead of time.
Probably wouldn't have been a loss for the boards, but it would have been a huge loss for me.
If you look at the number of guests compared to the number of members active on the board at any one time, it's about 10 guests to every member. That is the number of people we are reaching that we would likely never reach any other way.

But this is a side-conversation to the original thread.

 

[DammitJanet]

Well as someone who has had their posts used against them I understand wishing people would either understand this is our safe place to vent or not even see what we write but that isnt happening. I have also been upset on occasion by people making fun of certain people. I have read posts about people from the south, people being "trailer trash", weight, etc and I have had to learn to get past it.

Just part of being a community I guess. Not everyone has the same opinion or experiences.

 

[BusynMember]

If somebody is really hurting, there is really no need to worry about reading the forums. Sometimes we have people coming on here who don't seem to have any kids or are just here to judge us. Those are the people who should read the forums first to see if they are a fit. If you have no deeply troubled adult children or just have a two year old, why would you post advice here, ya know?? I remember how self-righteous I was about "bad" kids before I had one. I would have been horrible on one of these forums before I lived it (shudder). I really believed it was all because parents were "bad." How naive!!!!

That doesn't happen very often. When it does, it is hurtful, but thankfully it is not common.

I find it odd when somebody won't state the country they live in, which may give us some understanding as to their views. I can understand people who are timid about stating his/her city or even state (province) but country? Again, though, this is rare. But it does make it hard for us to be sensitive to cultural differences if we don't know what the culture is.

 

[soapbox]

Sometimes we have people coming on here who don't seem to have any kids or are just here to judge us.

Perhaps we need a more stringent membership filtering? It would be more work for the mods but... if people had to declare their "link" to the site, it would filter out SOME of the people who don't belong. However... some will make up any story under the sun just to get "in".
Maybe we need to quarantine new posters posts for longer... again, more work for the mods.

No easy answer, but yes, some have come among us who do not fit on any front.

 

[tiredmommy]

As a moderator, I can say that I feel it would not be a good idea to close reading to members only. I imagine that my initial experience with this forum is pretty typical. I was searching online to figure out my child's issues. What I found when I landed here was understanding, guidance and support. I would not have registered that night in order to read because I would have moved down the list displayed by my search engine.

The fact that our site can be read by anyone with a internet connection is why we encourage members to be extremely careful about potentially identifiable information. As for those members that wish that their location not be known: I implore our other members to respect their decision as you would like your decisions respected. Many other cultures around the world take an extremely hard line against mental illness and behavior disorders, they are viewed as personal failings of not only the patient but the entire family. To be "outed" as mentally ill in these cultures can have devastating effects.

As always, we ask that members use the report button to let the moderator group know when there is a problem with a post or member so that we can address the situation. I also ask that members please review our house rules for a refresher on how we are to conduct ourselves here. They can be found here:

http://www.conductdisorders.com/forum/f7/house-rules-1/

 

[BusynMember]

Tired Mom, you ARE right that some cultures find mental illness a terrible thing. It was an excellent point.

 

[DaisyFace]

I would not want the forum closed to "members only"...

I know there have been a few times that new posters have come here, absolutely frantic with worry, looking for answers with kids that were dangers to themselves. We were able to help by giving those new families instant help - and potentially helping to save the lives of their children. That is no small thing.

I, for one, am happy to put up with the occassional troll if it means we can continue to offer help to desperate strangers in their darkest hours.

 

[judi]

I've been a member here a long time and I'm also an admin at a very large >700,000 member board. Hard being a mod/admin.

Over the years I've posted, lurked, posted and now semi-lurking here. It provided me a place to land when my world was spinning out of control.

I think you have to take the good with the bad when you come to these forums. Some posters who have responded to my posts have been right on the money while others felt we were either too lenient or jumped the gun too soon.

At any rate the CD board offers a wide variety of opinions....some I take and use, some I ponder and some I just shake my head at...lol.

 

[slsh]

I have been a member since 1999. I count the board support I received during those exceptionally dark years as one of the greatest gifts in my life. Were all of the suggestions on point or helpful? Nope. Were there some comments that rubbed me the wrong way? Yep, but some also caused me to think more outside the box and be more reflective about what was going on at the time.

None of the posters on this board are "lucky." None of us. We are walking similar paths. We bring with us a vast amount of differing experiences and opinions. That used to be the beauty of the board. Assistance and support came from unexpected places, in unexpected forms.

Seems nowadays if you post an alternate way of looking at things, you're being "unsupportive." Having recently been royally reamed by another long-time member because I had the audacity to present an alternate opinion, I've come to the conclusion that, for me, the board is no longer a soft place to land. And perhaps that's the result of decades of living with difficult children - maybe us older members just don't have it in us to consider other opinions and have become too war-weary to respond in more gentle fashions - or to just ignore the less helpful comments. Maybe it's the natural evolution of the place. Makes me sad, because the tenor of the board is, in my humble opinion, far less welcoming to newbies. Used to be take what you can, leave the rest. Now it seems more frequently we trash quite brutally differing opinions.

There have always been occasional responses that are completely off target. But to endorse a policy of "post only if you've been thru this exactly" or "post only if you agree with me" defeats the purpose and beauty of what this board used to be.

Maybe I was just lucky in that I joined at a time when, in spite of occasional board wars, there was a general acceptance and recognition that we all bring something of worth to the table.

 

[SuZir]

I'm little bewildered. I hope it wasn't me, whose comments you have found hurtful MWM. Not my intention, even if I do have some little less popular opinions about certain things in this board and am not from North America and as you recently wrote, 'have been lucky', when my son 'only has some mental health issues and fleeting addiction problems' and has been doing better lately.

I'm also one of those, who is not willing to state my exact country of origin (however, if it is necessary to state one, I can lie and give one with similar enough that you will not notice the difference.) Part of the reason I'm here, is that this is not the board from my own region. I couldn't write to regional board and not be very worried about anonymity. To be honest, if I start to notice people from my region to write here often, I will likely leave. Still, I do not hope this to become members only-board. I too was a lurker for quite some time before registering and wouldn't have ever registered if I haven't read the post first. I think it is same to many others. Few register to group they can't no anything about beforehand.

Especially when here the board name and most of the conhtent don't match. Very few of us have kids with conduct disorder. It seems that with our younger kids the most common problem is Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and related issues. With our older and adult kids it is mostly addiction issues with some mental health issues mixed between. Actual conduct disorder - not so much.

However I'm little spooked how high topics from this board tend to end up in Google searches around these issues (which of course was the way I did find this board first time too.)

 

[BusynMember]

There was a new poster here. His posts have been removed now. It was not you, Suz.

I'd say most of us don't even know, by this age, what our grown kid's disorders are for sure. We just know they are abusive to us, unwilling to help themselves, and impossible to live with in any sort of peace. Some are dangerous.

Every country diagnoses and treats it's younger kids differently. For example, what is ADHD in XXX may be Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in YYY. The treatments also tend to be different and t he go-to person as well. If somebody comes here and says, "Hi, I'm from the uk" I tend to tell them to go to the go-to person in their country rather than give the normal person one who contact in the US because the healthcare systems are different.

In the big picture, on this board, our adult kids just tend to be intolerable and unwilling to change or to even think they have done anything wrong. I am not in a good place right now, although I am handling it far better than I used to, and was very sensitive when that poster put up his posts. But it was dealt with.

I'd rather not get advice from somebody who has never had an adult child who has caused mass chaos, but it is my decision whether or not to read the post fully or not so I agree after this thread that everyone should be welcome. There is actually an "ignore" feature here (sigh). I hope to never have to use it.

 

[Estherfromjerusalem]

I really want to reply to this, but I'm scared of saying something wrong !!!!!!

I just want to say that I have never ever hidden where I live, neither have I hidden my religion, but neither of those things have ever been a subject for discussion -- nor have they caused any bad feeling or even topics for discussion. Wherever people live and whatever beliefs they have, if they are struggling with difficult children, be it conduct disorders or whatever else (such as encopresis, for example), if there is anyone else here who can offer any sort of helpful (or maybe not so helpful) suggestion, then in my humble opiniin that is a blessing, even if it is irrelevant or just gives the person with the problem food for thought, or maybe even if it just gives that person the feeling that they have been hugged and not spurned. Of course there is the occasional irritating person, but in all the years that I've been on this board (and I'm one of the most veteran) there have been very very few annoying posters. I always remind myself that no one forces me to read anything that annoys me. And if I choose to read something -- then I either agree or not, and that's as far as it goes.

One day I promise to give an update on my difficult child. Suffice it to say that I have booked my trip and in February I am going to Australia to see him!!!

Love, Esther

 

[SuZir]

MWM: With that comment about most of our kids not having conduct disorder, I meant, that if this was a members only-board, many people with kids with exactly the type of problems we are discussing about, would not find their way to here. I'm sure this board has been a great blessing to many parents with difficult to parent Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), or other neurological issue, kid. Or parents with teens or adults with substance abuse issues. If those parents would only see the name of the board and not the discussion here, they would not likely find their way to this board, because their kids have not been diagnosed, neither do they suspect, conduct disorder.

 

[BusynMember]

Oh, yes, I agree, Suzir. None of my kids ever had that diagnosis. I think this is more a board for behaviorally impaired kids of all ages.

 

[AnnieO]

I originally landed here after a Google search, too. I lurked for about a month, reading, before I even became a member... That was nearly 5 years ago. I never in my life have belonged to a forum that I stayed in more than a few months at most. But here... Sometimes I post a lot, sometimes not so much.

After having to change my name and signature line recently, having been "found" by someone who knew darned good and well I was posting here and what about for 4 of those years, I understand the need for anonymity. on the other hand, I use the "unread posts" link and it brings up all the new posts in all the forums. I know I've commented in PE, before I had an adult child... In ECZ before I had Rose.

There have been a few times that people replied to my posts and I felt judged. There have been times I did not post, because I "didn't want to hear it". A couple of those people I felt judged by... Weren't. I didn't realize it till later. They were giving me their thoughts based on their experiences (and some I count among people I trust implicitly, now). That said, trolls make me very, very, very angry.