Should I send dd to boarding school a year or early

I don’t think the issue everyone has is about her going to boarding school, it’s about your reasoning for sending her now.

She is currently surrounded by friends and family that can support her through the difficult time she is having (family that you have a good relationship with so I’m sure they will speak highly of you and encourage her to mend the relationship), you want to take that stability away and send her to boarding school against her will (you say that at this moment in time she would hate it). All that will do is fracture your relationship with her more.

Don’t make your daughter feel rejected and like she is being punished because you are jealous. If you live close by why don’t you start doing a week day evening activity together, that way she doesn’t feel like she is missing out on teenage life at the weekends.

First of all boarding school is difficult enough to be apart from a child but one in a different country is harsh. She's happy and settled, which will hopefully be a foundation to rebuild a closer relationship, rather than her feeling aggrieved.

I hear you, OP & you have my utmost sympathy. I would be devastated too, if my DD took more to her dad’s partner than I, her mother.

Now, what I would do in this situation would be to pitch the idea with her dad, who’ll in turn , speak to her about it. The hope here is that she sees it from her dad’s loving perspectives , you get ?

All the very best.

Just so you know, I’d be looking at doing something similar in your shoes.

You’ll be VERY surprised, actually.

I think you shouldn’t make any rash decisions yet. Your Ex should really be forcing her to see you as by not doing anything he’s effectively alientating you. How would he feel if you did with the younger daughter?

I also think you need to tell her directly that if she wants to stay in Spain that’s fine. That you will too. I suspect that’s the real reason she’s pushed you out as she doesn’t want to leave the first place she considers home.

Have PM'd you

Hi, not really to do with the thread but I am really interested (as a therapist who works with people who went to BS) in what your thoughts were in sending your children when you hated it
No blame, judgement or anything, it would be really helpful for me to understand
You could PM me if you'd like?

This

@Jadebanditchillipepper
I wouldn't be sending her to boarding school unless she herself wants to go.

Have I missed it, or has the OP mentioned anywhere that her DD wants to go? I'd never force any child to go to boarding school, I went myself and hated it, though two of my children loved it.
Wanting to separate a child from an ex's GF is not a good reason to send her away. She will have a completely different relationship with her to that which she has with her DM. If this controlling jealousy continues the OP will possibly lose her daughter for life.

The issue is seeing you and gf as mutually exclusive in your DD's life due to jealousy. Both can coexist. Taking her away from gf is not going to make DD start liking you any more.

I understand not wanting her to ONLY have gf as gf may be temporary and isn't her real mum, but again it's not 1 or the other.

If gf was a bad influence I'd understand taking her away but she's not.

I know this is neither here nor there but I was just reading about how Diana fired most of Will and Harry's nannies out of jealousy, which was traumatising for the boys. The thing is, Will & Harry invited their beloved nannies to their wedding, became the nanny's child's godfathers, etc. I think it's a mistake to assume the bond between children and a non-parental figure is artificial just because it's formed in a tumultuous time and the child is young. If only Diana had seen that the boys loved/needed her in their own way, and that she could coexist with the other stable female figures in the boys' lives, it would have saved W&H a lot of damage.

DD sees the gf as a friend, and she’s still resentful at you and her dad for splitting and ruining her life (of course you haven’t, but at 11 this is what she thinks). You say you’re still seeing her so do better when you’re with her. Did you actually think sending her to another country would fix your relationship? Try harder.

Kira4 I don't have any experience of a marriage break up or having to move around a lot, but I do have experience of raising two girls who act out and generally push against the people who love them most (mostly the Mother). My older daughter had a lot of antipathy towards me between the ages of about 9 and 13. I don't think I handled it as well as I could have done - I thought that if she didn't want to have much to do with me, I should respect that decision and in hindsight, I think that was the wrong approach. She is now 20 and has come way out the other side, but still seems to have more of an affinity with her Dad than with me.

My younger daughter is 12 and has gone almost overnight from being a Mummy's girl to thinking I'm the most embarrassing person ever - she wants me when she wants something (eg picking up from school - she hates walking), but if she doesn't want anything will more often than not tell me to go away. I'm taking a different approach this time - if she tells me to go away that's fine, but she gets a text instead telling her what I wanted to say and letting her know I love her and am there if she changes her mind.

I think you just have to keep the lines of communication open with your daughter - Keep inviting her for the weekend or for activities or whatever however much she says no - she will probably surprise you and say yes one day. Let her bring a friend with her if she wants to, invite her over on the other weekends when her Dad's girlfriend isn't there and also on evenings after school. If you do something with her sisters - invite her too. Maybe pick her up from school in a Friday and take her to your house for as long as she is happy to say. Text her pictures, funny stories, say hello and goodnight, say you hope she has a good day at school etc etc play the long game and she will almost certainly come round eventually.

I wouldn't be sending her to boarding school unless she herself wants to go. Good luck

Isn't sending her to another country specifically to reduce her friendship with the gf as controlling an action as you can get...

I mean it's not even just a bit controlling, it's about as controlling as you can get really.

But she is obviously very happy where she is why change that?

I think that you need to let go of your jealousy about the GF. From what you write the GF is not trying to usurp your parental role but has taken on the role of older, "fun" cousin/aunt/family friend (doing silly dances, making daft videos ...). Kids often need someone who can just be fun, in the moment and non-judgemental - especially your DD who has been a period of stressful family breakup.

You mentioned in a previous post that your ex/dd think you are too controlling. So think about that - are you controlling? Have you been judgemental about dd or complaining that she is like her father? Because I've seen this play out in the family of one of my own dd's oldest friends and it permanently damaged the mother-daughter relationship to the extent that now in her 20s she barely speaks to her mother and they live 10,000km apart. The main issues between my dds friend and her mum were frequent country and house moves, changing schools, jealousy that she preferred to live with her dad and trying to micro manage her life to suit the mum's ambitions.

One thing I don't understand is why you are so reluctant to see your dd without her siblings present? Girls of her age absolutely need 1:1 time with their mum so you are being really short sighted to lump her in with the others when your relationship is bad. Having her siblings present invariably means that her time with you is limited by what they can/want to do. She is at the age where she needs to feel important to you. Also 11 is the age when she will start to drift away from parents and towards friends anyway. So why not focus on starting small and encourage your daughter to spend an evening/night 1:1 on one of the days when her siblings are with your ex and focus just on her - what would she like to do just for her? Dinner out? Cinema? Swimming? Event? Lounging on the sofa watching a box set?

It would be a wicked cruel thing to do, and I doubt she would ever forgive you. Not exactly the result you say you want of bringing the two of you closer. I think the result you want is to separate her from the new girlfriend. Kind of evil, really.

No. You’re being spiteful and jealous and putting your own feelings way above your daughters. This is awful. There are reasons why she’s lost to you at the moment and I think that’s probably more your fault than hers. As she grows up and matures she may come back to you, and you can try and re build your relationship. But if you do this horrible cruel thing to tear her away from someone she’s attached to, after all she’s been through, just to help your jealous feelings, she’ll likely hate you, forever.

All the evidence shows that children benefit from having more loving adult figures in their life. 1 more won't hurt.

You can't just rip your daughter away out of jealousy, especially if you're not prepared to sacrifice prestige (prestigious school) and put in actual time and effort to spend time with your daughter and make it enjoyable for her. (Yes, she doesn't like your company atm, but your approach of chucking her into boarding immediately is hardly going to help that.)

You asked for perspectives. I was your daughter, growing up in between worlds, and my mother (who claims to be loving and is/was, but also emotionally stunted like you) always had odd solutions like you, mostly throwing money at problems.

"I don’t think she is genuinely happy tbh" is bonkers. Of course she's happy. All children (even teens) want is a stable, loving figure. That makes them happier than all the fancy stuff in the world.

Just because she's a troubled teen doesn't undermine that. If anything, it makes it more important. I still remember the year at 16 or 17 when my dad was laid off from his CEO-level job and was actually in the same country as us. My parents probably find that the harshest year to look back on, yet it was genuinely the happiest year of my entire teens.

Even then, she may have underlying fears around the temporariness of her dad's gf, or she may have mixed feelings of resentment towards you... Still, none of whatever Evil Stepmother move (even though ironically, you're the birth mother) are planning is going to fix that.

I 100% get the boarding advice for education & career prospects in the long term, but consider 2 things –

1. Now is probably not the time. She'll probably gain more mental health issues + resent you for a long time.

If you're afraid she'll get "too used" to her current situation and want to rip off the band-aid and bring her over before it's too late, perhaps consider a transition period of actually living with your family (as opposed to strangers, no matter how lovely you find them) first.

2. If she's happy where she is, maybe it might be more pragmatic and beneficial in the long run for her to stay there. Boarding school doesn't mean your life is necessarily going to be perfect or even good.

I know plenty of boarding school people who have stuffed up their life badly (some literally, i.e. died young, by their own hand) because of childhood dysfunction.

Your family loves you because you're you. Love is unconditional.

Whereas at boarding school, older students and teachers often take a special shine to certain students. And survival (emotional & practical) depends on gaining the favour of teachers and students around you.

No matter how cosy a certain boarding school looks like on the outside, boarding school inevitably forms your worldview of love, attention etc as prizes linked with scarcity and competition.

Of course less so for those with a present, loving – i.e. actively shows you they love you by making you happy, not just claims to love you – family, with no adverse childhood events, but I still believe they absorb that worldview.

Kindly, only because she's still young. She may well change her approach to you when she's older.

I can imagine the heartbreak of feeling that your child is somewhat rejecting you, it must be painful and I understand that this is following the challenges you would have all experienced before, during and after the divorce.
Is it possible that your daughter is trying to express the anger she has been feeling because of the breakup by punishing and rejecting you?
I know that as parents we all want to believe that children are resilient, they can adapt, they will forget and so on. However, my own personal and professional experience tells me otherwise. Children’s experience needs to also be validated, acknowledged and respected.
I believe that to attempt resolving the difficulties you are experiencing with her by removing her from an environment, where she has a support network and feels at home, could be a mistake. You say that you know that she will eventually enjoy the school back in the UK. That may be true and that may not solve the issues in your relationship with her. She may still want to enjoy time with other people rather than you. Perhaps something is broken between you two and you can fix it by paying attention to what she is trying to communicate to you through her behavior. You could start by opening up about your feelings as you experience sadness that she is not willing to spend time with you. She may then feel allowed to open up too.

This reminds me of hearing a dad telling his son it was time to get home as it was mummy’s turn to look after him now and it was daddy’s turn for a break.

I’m all for more involved dads and equal parenting, but this preoccupation with treating kids like a job to be divvied up has got to be damaging to their little psyches. I mean do it but don’t tell them!