Boarding school

@VyeBrator I use flexiboarding too. As a single mum, I have to provide a home for my ds, pay mortgage & heating and food & clothes.

Yes I could take a lesser job and fail to do those things or I can use my skills and experience in my chosen profession to achieve the best balance possible for my child. I'm 59 so retraining is not a serious option. My child is happy, secure, settled, doing well. It works for us.

Parenting is a balancing act in most households. We all do the best we can. Your judgement is not helpful to anyone.

If doing it now & using flexi boarding to facilitate that is ‘all about me’ when it provides us with a better life then yes guilty as charged..would you prefer I claimed benefits???

Again with the 'benefits' thing? You're making yourself sound ridiculous, pretending it's that or sending kids away, rather than parents putting their children over their favoured job.

And as you well know, a nanny raises no-one's children if the parents come home to them everyday after work, to live life as a family.

I mean we all make our own choices but you seem to refuse to own yours, by pretending you'd have to claim benefits if you didn't send your child away so you can do your preferred job.

@VyeBrator Progressing one’s career is considered generally a positive step & having to travel for work is hardly unheard of.. I refused to travel when she was young and that had a significant impact on my career. If doing it now & using flexi boarding to facilitate that is ‘all about me’ when it provides us with a better life then yes guilty as charged.. would you prefer I claimed benefits???

Not that I need to justify why I don’t agree with nannies.., I simply don’t want someone else raising my child, that is what a nanny does in my opinion. Some might say boarding school is the same. Full time boarding is to an extent but only during term time which incidentally is shorter in a boarding school … whereas nannies are typically all year round.

I am able to focus on my career

There you have it in a nutshell. It's all about you.

I personally think using a nanny is a dreadful thing to do to a child and would never have employed one

Interesting that you haven't offered up any reason for that.

I personally think using a nanny is a dreadful thing to do to a child and would never have employed one, but I'm able to recognize that it suits and works for some people / their children. I don't judge you for it. It worked for you, considering your job & it's demands. That's great.

I've worked full time, done every school run and look after my child 95% of the time myself since she was 18 months old. Now she's older and has different needs, I am able to focus on my career and that means travel & at times long hours during which she boards. I apologize if this falls short of your standards... My daughter is very happy with the arrangement. She's actually boarding this evening to take advantage of the party arranged by the school - by the looks of the pictures she's sent me, she & her friends are having a blast of a time!

Please free free to direct your judgement and contempt at someone who actually cares..

My cousin’s kids were sent at 8. I barely see that side of the family but when we met up her daughter told us about the awful effect it’d had on her and that she didn’t feel part of her own family. She’s incredibly bitter about it.

I’d rather go to the moon then send my own kids. Why have them to send them away? All that nurturing and love is just missing. It’s unthinkable to most parents.

Thoughtful and informative article on boarding school

www.madintheuk.com/2022/12/boarding-school-bad-children-syndrome/

@Pinkyxx @jeaux90 I'm a working single mum and my daughter has never been in a boarding school. Shock horror. It's actually possible to be a single mum, work and live with your kid. Who would have thought!

When she was younger, I had a live-in nanny and now she's 12 she doesn't need one. There are many different options available besides boarding school.

You know there's a big space between not working and sending your kids away so you can do your preferred job?

Some people seem to be deliberately missing this.

@jeaux90 don't work and you're a lazy handout taker, work and use flexi boarding so you actually can work, you're a bad parent.. I've lost count of the things I've been judged for.. good thing I don't give a much credence to the opinions of others.. I'd encourage you to do the same.

I've done this alone since she was a toddler and no one knows how hard it is to raise a child and work full time unless they've done it themselves. We single mums do what we have to do. Mine started to flexi board in secondary. She's happy and exceling at school, does her work without prompt from me, wants a career, loves that she can access after school activities and gets to spend time with her friends when she boards. I'm counting that as a parenting success!

Yes and blame it on the fact there is no other job in the universe you can choose, so you simply have to send your kids away.

This.

It’s tempting though, send your kid away for most of the year, let someone else deal with the activities, homework, teenage hormones and tantrums. Just get them back for holiday.
offload the tedious aspects of parenthood, and it’s all okay because your kid is in onenif the best schools.

I apologise too

my dislike of the idea of boarding school has stepped over into me being petty about any forms of boarding school

@VenusClapTrap @Thepeopleversuswork

Thank you.

I agree.
I am very anti boarding but there are some cases where it IS the best option for the child.
However, I was a day pupil at a Boarding school and from all the boarders who’s circumstances I knew well probably 2 were better off boarding than being with their families.

‘Small DC are in 'wrap around care' as fairly standard and fully accepted as normal from babyhood. Boarding is just a further step.’

interesting take and probably how many people justify it to themselves. Except few parents I know use 8-6pm wrap around care everyday. They’ve all made some kind of compromise where very young kids might have a couple of days like this, but the other days the child is in a shorter club instead, or picked up from school by a parent/ relative/friend a day or two a week.

When kids were small we both went 4 days a week so had 2 to be with kids, one ‘ long’ day, a club day where they were collected at 4pm and a day where a friend got them from school and kept them and we reciprocated for their kid.
it wasn’t easy, it means constant juggling, checking schedules to see who’s doing ineX flexible work etc but most parent finds a way. If they want to.

Ironically the people shunting their kids off to boarding school are often the ones who could afford the best help at home, with a nanny, housekeeper, childminder or similar.

‘Why are people making this about single mums?

The thread is about sending children away to boarding school. I don't have an opinion on single parents, just parents who choose to send their kids away from them, so they can do a job they choose instead.
Because in your opinion there is no reason ever to use boarding in any shape or form.’

except you aren’t boarding your kid in the sense that everyone understands it, are you?

a child living at home and occasionally boarding 2 nights a week is t that different from a child who is staying at another parents a couple of nights or going to granny’s 2 nights to get looked after while you’re away.
So wind your neck in and stop detailing the main chat with your outrage.

Can I just add this into the mix.

Some children need a particular type of education that is only available at boarding schools. I'm thinking about Deaf children but there are specialist schools for children with various needs whether that is a disability or something like anorexia.

I'm actually quite surprised that the government is not enthusiastic about boarding schools, both independent and state and promotingthem. With both parents needing to work having DC in schools longer means more work time, available for longer hours. On the treadmill of the life of work.
Small DC are in 'wrap around care' as fairly standard and fully accepted as normal from babyhood. Boarding is just a further step.

@Hoppinggreen

Some have, yes but the boarding school topic seems to have given air cover to some of the people who talk about evil working mums who “farm out” their children without considering the mitigating circumstances.

I find it distasteful and a bit triggering.

And some of us who are generally anti boarding have expressed sympathy and support for her situation

I am quite uncomfortable with the direction this thread is going in particularly with regard to @jeaux90. I personally wouldn’t send my child to boarding school unless it was unavoidable for the reasons detailed at length on this thread. I am lucky I haven’t had to.

I also think there is some validity to the Boarding School Syndrome idea: I have known people who boarded from a young age and there is an emotional detachment which I find unsettling.

But as a single parent it’s uncanny and unsettling how much of the rhetoric here is painfully close to the fairly moronic stuff you get on the SAHM vs WOHM threads, ie “why bother having kids if you don’t want to raise them.

Frankly a scenario such as the one @jeaux90 uses, ie flexi boarding, would have made my life a hell of a lot easier and would have allowed me to advance a lot further in my career.

Theres a vast difference between this and packing children off for an entire term. Life can be relentlessly hard for single parents (and some in families).

Wanting to provide better for your children and facilitating your ability to work harder when you have no family support is not inconsistent with being a good parent. I don’t see why allowing a child to stay in a safe setting a couple of nights a week to facilitate that is fundamentally different from allowing them to stay with a close family member such as a grandparent.

@jeaux90 is doing the best she can for her child.

There are many reasons why people do board their kids and some of these reasons are because of being a lone parent.

Doesn't that still boil down to choosing a preffered job though?

Flexi-boarding aged 13, when you've been at the school for a while and have friends, is a different thing altogether from full boarding at 8, or 11, when you don't know anyone yet. I think the former is great; the latter, no.