Casey'smom, I am not offended, just puzzled as I did not speak about Susan's childhood in a negative way at all. When I did speak about it, it was to say she seemed to come from a very close family. So I'm not sure why your post was directed to me.
However, people will discuss the childhoods of famous people. Susan herself not only spoke about some of her experiences, being bullied etc. but in her own words said that she wanted to 'show people with learning disabilities that they can turn a 'disability into an ability'. I find that to be an admirable dream.
Clearly she does not view her experiences as anything to be ashamed of and has spoken for herself on the subject, and neither do I since I have spent most of my adulthood working with some of the most gifted children, many of whom had learning disabilities. She clearly does not need anyone else speaking for her on this subject, it is an important issue for her. She has made that clear.
If part of her dream, as she said, is to enlighten a sometimes very ignorant and prejudiced world, to help end any remaining prejudices against people with disabilities, imo, that is one of her most important goals.
To not want to talk about something, imo, demonstrates a subconscious fear of the topic. A fear Susan herself, rightly, does not seem to have. Most likely due to the excellent teaching of her parents.
I have a feeling this is something she will speak about in the future and will have a huge influence over. What is not good about that? Unless you think there is something wrong with having any kind of disability (I mean 'you' in the generic sense, not you personally)
And this is the most I have ever said about Susan's childhood, btw. What I responded to were some comments about her attempts to further her career and posted a link to a video of one of those attemtps. She was an adult in her 30s at that time.
Anyhow, really I don't want to have to explain everything I say or to be lectured as if I were a child, about what I can discuss. My question was: Are there rules about what can and what can not be discussed at this site, if only discussion about good things happening to Susan at this stage of her life, is permitted, and if that is the case, I was not aware of it. Even though until this post in this thread, I did not discuss Susan's childhood in any negative way, or at all for that matter, your admonition raised the question as to what is acceptable to discuss, that's all. I would not want to participate any environment that, eg, views disabilities of any kind, as 'negative'. I had hoped that most of us who can think at all, were beyond that, as Susan herself certainly is.
What I am beginning to see here, I have seen on so many other sites that started out so nicely. Some people start to feel the need to make rules for everyone else, based on what bothers them personally. That then bothers those who didn't feel they were doing anything wrong, and that causes many good people to leave.
Those experimenting with html, which is a very valuable tool for a site like this, will get over it once they learn how it works on the site. A little patience with that would have been nice. Then, most likely, as always happens, they will share their knowledge with others who will find it very useful in the future.
There are things that bother the rest of us, but so much more important issues to spend time on, than a few little irritations on a website. Which is why I would rather leave than spend time every day dealing with everyone expressing their small grievances, instead of being awed really, that they have the ability to communicate with people from all over the world, and simply avoid the little things that bother them.
Anyhow, I've wasted, against my better judgement, way too much time on this already. I really do hope everyone can just be a little more patient with each other.
Which goes for me too (picture smiley face here :-).