QUESTION:

I love your site and was wondering if you'd ever consider adding a message board and/or chat so that parents would have a place to meet and offer each other support!

REPLY:

In my earlier online life, I was the original board facilitator for Parent Soup's Spirited/High-Need Children message board.  I loved how our community grew offering support to long-time people as well as all the 'newbies'.  I learned a tremendous amount from the folks there even making a few life-long friends.

Over time, as more and more information was gathered and set up as reference for people either active on or visiting the board, I began a website so I wouldn't have to keep reposting everything.  Hard to believe it started out because I was too lazy to keep reposting! ;o)

Eventually, the website took more and more time and I was still spending at least 2 - 3 hours *every day* on the message board replying, encouraging discussions, posing weekly questions, etc...

Needless to say, within a few months I had to make a decision to go with one or the other and I chose to continue the website (even moving it to it's own domain) and resign from leading the community ~ by no means an easy decision, but one that was necessary in order for me to retain balance within my personal life.

In order to be truly successful, message boards and chat rooms require a active facilitator who can make the committment to be there on a daily basis.  I've visited many wonderful sites that have set up forums and, without an active facilitator maintaining the energy and focus, they quickly become vacant and of no real value to visitors looking for help.  Since there are already quite a few wonderful online support sites for parenting spirited children, I've chosen to instead refer people to check these out and find the one that best matches their needs and parenting philosophy.

My available online time is now spent regularly surfing the internet looking for new resources, attending conferences and workshops to expand my own knowledge base so that I can share it with everyone here, and focusing on expanding my site as it naturally grows and evolves.

Thanks so much for your suggestion and best of luck finding your online 'home'!