ALL-kids is an Internet e-mail list that provides support for families and caregivers of children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL. It is currently hosted by the Association for Cancer Online Resources, or ACOR. Most list members have children currently in treatment for ALL, although a good percentage of parents whose children have gone off treatment remain on the list to lend experience and encouragement to new members. Some parents on the list lost their children to ALL; these parents, too, remain on the list for the community and to help other parents.

ALL-kids is a place where parents can openly and freely discuss the health and social problems related to treatment, as well as the psychological and emotional impacts of being a "Cancer Parent".

The list works best if all subscribers are participants. Until you are ready to post to the list we ask that you make a small private introduction to the current list administrator (Patty). We have found this is the best way to protect the privacy and confidentiality of members of the list in a public forum like the Internet. We hope you will post a brief introduction about yourself to the list as soon as you feel comfortable. If you prefer to "lurk" it will be allowed if you send an introduction privately to the list administrator.

Please note: If you do not provide an introduction - either personal or to the list - within a month of joining, you will be deleted from ALL-kids.

ALL-kids history

The ALL-Kids e-mail group has been around since April of '97 - that's an ETERNITY in WWW years!! At the time of its creation, there was no other message board or email list specific to childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A mom named Teri began the ALL-kids list; her son is now off treatment and doing well (2007), and Teri has moved on to other endeavors. Thanks to Teri, parents of children diagnosed with ALL have had a safe, friendly, and caring place to discuss issues specifically related to this type of childhood cancer.

New members and old members: take some time to read the Guidelines for the list. Most of the items listed there are not hard and fast rules, except for flagrant violations of appropriate behavior such as selling items or services on the list, mining the archives for the purpose of collecting information about members, or posting any unlawful, fraudulent, threatening, abusive, libelous, or otherwise objectionable or harmful information of any kind. Most of the items listed in the guidelines are gathered from the past experience of the list administrators and if they are followed, the list is a more comfortable place for all members.

If you want to leave the list or change your subscription options, please do not post your request to the entire list. Instead, you can make the changes yourself or e-mail the list administrator. How-to details are on the Subscription page.

The ALL-kids list has over 450 members. To help you keep everyone straight, check out the ALL-kids directory. If you are not listed and want to be, contact the list administrator.

Information about ALL and concerns of childhood cancer in general is available on the web. Visit the links page for shortcuts to good information about these topics.