This is originally a comment I wrote (found in sidebar) and I decided to make it a post. Please note the following:
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Stan et al, as far as I recall I have never attacked you [or anyone] on the internet personally. You may find my comments around the web to be, in your opinion, contradictory. I say I am anti-med and yet I have used them and will use them again. And I’m ok with you being bothered with that. I’m not running for the hills or anywhere else. I don’t have to defend my parenting decisions or my philosophies to you. I have never even met you. What you won’t ever find is me personally attacking anyone or being mean or vindictive. I don’t assume I know what is right for everyone else or anyone else and that is where we differ.
Don and I are raising a child with some challenges. My son has a million friends and has a great life but he has challenges. All of his friends know he has challenges. Everyone who has ever dealt with him for any length of time knows he has challenges. It is no secret. We are doing the best we can to raise a happy, healthy, responsible, self supporting, moral and decent child, teen and eventual man. We open our hearts and our lives, albeit anonymously, to people in the world because we chose to. However, I don’t think it is fair for us to take on personal attacks. I own this site and all of its contents and I think I’ve had enough of it. If you and Stephany don’t like my parenting techniques or my parenting choices, that is your right to have that opinion. But on this site please express it respectfully or keep it to yourselves.
Don and I take full responsibility for Rye, including educating him ourselves. We take full responsibility for parenting him, guiding him and nurturing him and work extremely hard to keep him out of hospitals and other compromising situations. I don’t write about everything that happens in our lives but we have had many situations in which many other families would have hospitalized their child. Yet, we have not done it as we see it in our personal situation as doing more harm than good. And although I have talked about many meds on this site, Rye has actually been on meds maybe a total or 2 months in the last 12 months. He took the benzo 4 times total and he said he didn’t like it. We listened and he has never taken it since.
We have great respect for Rye. We value his opinion and listen to his needs. He never takes a med or anything else, for that matter, that he is not ok with. Rye has a great deal of say in his life and is given a great deal of trust. He is an incredible kid and we are extremely proud of him. We have no doubts that one day he will make a great husband and father. He just needs some guidance along the way, as all children and teens do.
This is the last time I will defend myself as a parent. Going forward, all personal attacks against me or anyone else on this site will be deleted. They have no part in a constructive conversation.
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This said I do love comments and I really like to know what people are thinking. Just be decent.
4 Comments
i ditto what you wrote. everything we talk about on our blogs is tough business. i think we can all agree on that. i really don’t know if there is a right answer in how to treat children like ours. all we can do is try our best with the information we have and hope (or pray) it works. thanks for putting all of this out there. you are a source for support and inspiration.
Having a comment policy is always a good idea, especially for people who write about mental health issues… I found a Disclaimer / Comment Policy a few years ago that probably sums up everything in one easy-to-read post:
http://namaii.com/readme/
But, really, everyone’s comment policy should break down to “if you piss me off I’ll retaliate”. I knew a blogger, for example, who used to take all the vowels out of comments that pissed her off. When the ‘anti people’ used to leave hostile comments on my blog I’d just do my best to be annoyingly over-polite and diplomatic.
Sarcasm also works. Meg, I’d suggest just being confident in both what you write, and in having a readership that’s going to support you. In the end it’s your blog, and it’s your Truth. Everybody else can simply fuck off.
Thanks Gabriel. I appreciate it.
Ditto what Gabriel said (Especially the “everybody else can fuck off” part
. I actually enjoy a good argument. I try to keep myself open to hearing differing viewpoints, to listen to people whose opinions are different from mine. But there’s a big difference between a discussion and a lecture, and categorical statements are always bad form.
Hang tough, Meg.