Explain facebook support groups to me

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I haven't been able to find a WrongPlanet-like forum for dyslexia, but there is a facebook group -- Decoding Dyslexia. I don't do facebook (decided I wasn't interested in what people I knew from high school had for lunch, etc) so I'm not familiar with the style there. The page appears to be divided into squares, with mainly news-type and informational-type postings. How do these type of facebook groups work? Would it be appropriate to create a new square with questions for other parents? (Things like, "What should I be doing to track my son's progress?")

I've looked at some Asperger's/Autism pages on FB, but I don't really get how they work, either. Plus FB is so weird about who can post what, and who can SEE things you post, that I don't feel comfortable posting anything personal. I just don't trust it.

I belong to a number of groups on FB (none of which are related in any way to mental health) and I don't recall seeing the sort of format you're talking about, so I can't help you with that. However, in terms of privacy, there are ways to set privacy controls on groups so that only registered members can see them - it depends on the group.

Go to Facebook and search "open," "closed," and "secret" groups, it will explain.

IMO, you're probably better off using a forum like this one, I can't imagine there isn't one for every type of disability.

The FB groups I'm a part of are really for disseminating information, which may or may not inspire discussion. I've seen some people ask questions, but you aren't going to get long responses like you do at a place like WrongPlanet. A quick one to three sentences, usually. For instance, you could ask "What's a great resource for X?" and someone would reply with "Try this resource Z. I use it with A and B." However, if you ask "What's going on with this problem G? I don't understand/so frustrated/etc.," you're not going to get the level of detail that you're probably looking for.

Since the statistcs seem to be 10-20% are dyslexic, even if that is inflated, you could probably get a lot of responses here if you post dyslexia related questions.

I found it very tough going from trying to learn to support child with ASD to this whole new language of dyslexia.

If the specific page has specific rules, they'll let you know (or just stop you from violating them). When I was recruiting for my research study, I frequented an FB page for moms of kids with ASDs and it was mostly moms asking questions and lots of people answering.

Regarding privacy - you can restrict your own privacy settings to make it very hard for people who know you to find you (although if they know you're on that dyslexia page) - they'll be able to see your posts there - since they're public. You can also make it so that anyone who comes across you from the dyslexia page will only be able to see the very basic elements of your profile (i.e. no pictures other than your profile picture).

I had to take those precautions myself as -in my work as a therapist, I have to be careful about what my clients can see about me online.