My 2 kids go to boarding school, AMA

[happylady1982]

My kids are 14 and 16, they both go to boarding school. Weekly boarding. This means they come home every weekend, and during the half terms and the major holidays too (Christmas, easter, summer).

Right now it's the summer holidays so they are home.

I wanted to do an AMA cause I think people still have negative stereotypes about boarding school.

This thread is dripping in jealousy 😂

OP I hope your children are happy at their school. Both my parents were boarders and loved it.

Do they have those trunks still to pack all their clothes in?

Is their laundry done- or do they bring it home on the weekends?

I did struggle when my oldest started boarding school. I knew she was happy but I was probably a bit dramatic because I cried daily for the first month 🤣. However, my son was still home so having one of my kids at home helped me cope emotionally lol

Although, I struggled more when my youngest went to boarding school because neither of my kids were home during the week. The house felt so empty. I sat there and cried my eyes out when I came home from work that day. Truly that whole first year was difficult, i hated sending them back to school. Hence why I decided to focus more on my career, in order to stop myself sitting there feeling sad everyday.

Nowadays this is just regular life and we are all happy. But that first year when both of them were at boarding school was difficult.

Oh yeah we're all super jealous of OP not seeing their kids during the week. Wise up.

So your assumption is that those being critical of boarding are simply jealous because they wish they could do it themselves but can't afford to? 🤔

Good on you OP. Sounds like it works well for everyone. Many children hate secondary school so to have two young people engaged, popular and loving life is a big win.

My Q is what are your views on private schools no longer benefiting from charity status? Are you happy to pay more, or does that feel unfair?

I don't think it's jealousy. Boarding at private schools in the UK as historically had quite a bad reputation in terms of the welfare of the children. Particularly boys schools.

I can understand people feeling like that especially if they've not experienced how many modern schools operate differently now. Also in the OP's experience weekly boarding is very different from being sent a long way from home for a whole term.

No it's my assumption based on all the bitchy questions dressed up as concern for her kids 😂 It's very obvious.

OP's DC are having a great time, this was their choice and one they are clearly still enjoying.

And yes posters on here are jealous as fuck.

Thank you for doing this am, it's really interesting. I have much younger kids and the thought of them being away for so much of the week is alien to me. But I don't know what it's like to have older children so I may have my mind changed when they're older! A friend of mine boarded from 16-18 and really loved it.

I have to say I do think there's the potential for a lot of fun, a lot of belonging and an opportunity for independence that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else. I just don't know if I can reconcile it with sacrificing raising my children myself, on a daily basis.

My question i suppose is (if you could bend reality) do you wish you could have the best of all worlds - they get the fantastic opportunities of boarding but also were home every day?

At least the OP sees her children at the weekend and I'm sure if there were issues during the week, she could come and take them home.
It's worth considering that in parts of the Scottish Highlands, especially in some of the remote islands, it's common for children to board during the week when they go to secondary school. I have a friend who did this and it was accepted as being part of routine life if your secondary school was on another island. If the weather was bad at the weekend and your boat home couldn't safely sail you spent the weekend boarding.

Hey thanks for doing such a detailed AMA. You note your total income to be circ. £280k. If this is pre tax and the fees are £90k does this make things a stretch, if not how (e.g. no mortgage)? Asking as you give us hope of archiving the same for our own little maggots!

I think UK schools call that flexi boarding - where you can pick two-four nights a week where they stay over but they are home the rest of the time.

My DD's school assigns a bed in a dorm to all the day students, so that they can stay over once or twice a week if they want to.

No it isn't. No teenager on Earth wants to spend all day, every day during the school holidays 'making memories' with their mother.😂

Yes, we used to get AMAs where the person really engaged and there was often a good, and illuminating debate.

Such a detailed AMA, including mentioning several times that mortgage on the family home was paid off years ago...

Didn't read it all. Its like 9 million pages. But that does answer the question.

Being able to read all of the OP's posts really helps though. Otherwise half of the 9 million pages are people asking questions that have already been answered, and people telling those people that the questions have already been answered.

If you look at the top right hand corner, there are 3 dots, if you click on "see all" it shows you all the OP's posts

Not necessarily jealousy of boarding, but certainly there’s likely to be envy that the OP has a very high income and enough spare cash to have the choice to educate her child as she sees best. Not many of us have that option, most people have just their local state schools, which is fine if they’re good. But when someone’s local state schools aren’t great, or their child is unhappy at school for whatever reason, and somebody on here is talking about spending £90k a year on schooling, then yes there’s going to be jealousy of them having other options available.

I think there is a lot of vaguely disguised jealousy on here.

Weekly boarding is very common now.

It's not really anything to post about or get worked up about.

Most parents who choose this do it to prolong the school day and extra activities and avoid a long journey home later in the evening.

@happylady1982 Your H clearly inherited money or was given a substantial amount as your combined income (once taxed) doesn't cover £90K pa school fees and a mortgage. From what you say he's either a GP partner, consultant (doctor) or in pharma sales, or medical research at Director level.

You've married well , as Jane Austen would say.

What you've described there is the Internet as a whole.

I totally agree with you, my secondary educated son (gcse all 9/8’s) was discussing football and WWE at 11 not future life choices!!

Keep it proportionate.

They spend one/2 nights a week with their parents at most term-time (for 8 months out of 12?) meaning no family memories eg a simple teatime conversation, a board game, a photograph taken together is being created. Those chances are being bypassed.

Summer holidays are the time to compensate. It’s really not that hard to understand.

They are with OP 3 nights a week during term time?

The level of reading comprehension here is awful.

OP has said her kids go to school on a Monday and come back on a Friday afternoon.

They are away Monday evening, Tues, Weds and Thursday.
Friday, sat, sunday at home.

Don't forget private schools also have much longer holidays.
8 weeks in the summer, often longer at Easter and Christmas.