Yahoo or Google Group for ADHD families?

[Anonymous]

I started a parent resource group at our local middle school for families with children who have ADHD and I am considering whether it would be helpful for our local high school. The MS group had a google group and held quarterly meetings. There was very little postings to the google group but the meetings had at least a handful of parents each meeting. I'm not sure if anonymity was more of a concern with the Group board than at meetings and that's why it wasn't used.

Anyway, I am considering it for the high school families--just the google group discussion board not regular meetings. The goal is to share information and helpful tips about our specific high school. It would be very helpful to have a sounding board for decisions about AP or dual enrollment classes, college application process as it relates to ADHD disclosure, etc.

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Would it be best to set it up for anonymous posts?

[Anonymous]

CHADD has online support--discussion threads, resources, etc.

If you do create a new group, I wouldn't make it anonymous b/c that breeds nastiness. People will think twice when posting if they're identifiable.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply. You have a good point. I certainly would want to avoid negativity. I use the CHADD forum as well as the Additude forum. I tend to have questions that are specific to the local area so I was hoping to build a group for those kinds of questions. For instance, universities tend to have a limit on the number of students accepted from each high school; therefore, one would want to have a transcript similar to their peers in order to be accepted. To that end, it would be helpful to have an idea of how many AP classes graduates tend to have, for example.

Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

I think th challenge is that as kids get older parent want to (or need to) respect their privacy more. Hard to do when th parents are part of an online or offline group.

At our school the college counselor can and does provide the data in York example, and even more important, advice for how that data does and doesn't apply to my DC.