Lifelong impact of going to Boarding school

[Munichfam5]

Just read a very upsetting article in the Observer featuring former boarding school pupils and their experiences - it’s from a documentary called ‘boarding on insanity’
at boardingoninsanity.com

Anyone else seen it ?

This (minus the reunion part) describes my brother’s boarding school experience to a T.

Unlike your partner who is happily OK, my brother is irretrievably damaged, being now basically non-functioning in many ways.

His four sisters also boarded (albeit at a later age), and came out unscathed.

So much depends on the person, the school, the age they first went, and how the family manages it and frames it.

You can read some dire accounts (from psychologists and psychiatrists) about boarding school syndrome but I only leafed through one such book (found in my brother’s flat) and found it terribly depressing. It was written in the form of a series of case studies, obviously aimed at practitioners not patients, and in the wrong hands would only serve to plunge a sufferer deeper in their misery. Some of the stories were harrowing. I wish my brother had not read it.

This is exactly what many of my students said. Particularly at schools where they had some say in who they roomed with.

I had one girl whose family lived a 10 minute walk from school who chose to board. She only dropped down to being a day student in the run up to exams when she needed a more peaceful study environment.

She is at school with them all day, every day plus has done some occasional nights so I think she has a pretty good idea.
Boarding from early teens+ isn't the end of the world if good pastoral support is in place.

I think bringing children into the world and then casting them out of the daily experience of living in the hub of the family is the kind of shit you'd only do if your back is to the wall and the only way to keep them safe. Doing it from the foundation of comfort and privilege is obscene.

This was a very interesting series from Nicky Campbell (3 episodes, 42 mins each). It got a bit of stick on Radio 4's Feedback programme because it only looks at boys' schools, but the producer says that's because she hopes they can make a second series looking at girls' boarding schools. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0027l58

I boarded during the 90s. Weekly from 9 then full from 11/12. I had a reasonably decent experience, no bullying, good school, good friends etc. It has taken many years to realise that the men I've chosen have been physically or emotionally unavailable in some way. I think there's a feeling of familiarity there that I'm fundamentally alone.

So it has massively affected my life despite me not realising it at the time. I think others feel similarly as I had a bit of grim faced chat about it with some people I went to school with a couple of years ago.

We emotionally supported each other as best we could and had caring house mistresses and matrons who would have been helpful for big issues but especially as a quieter person I wouldn't have bothered them with small stuff. And teenagers shouldn't really be each others main source of support, I just don't think we had the depth or emotional maturity to do that although we tried our best.

@RaspberryBeretxx teenagers shouldn't really be each others main source of support

Absolutely not. That is what good boarding staff are for. Those staff should know the students, care for them, take responsibility for them. It is a particular skillset, but is very very important.

One of my old students stayed very closely in touch with me when she went off to uni in the USA, because she saw me as a source of comfort and reassurance. And I was happy to continue that role with her. She dropped away once she'd settled.

It isn't just making sure they've done their prep and are in bed on time. I've had to talk to students who've been caught having sex, had to have discussions with individual girls about contraception, hear revelations about abuse in their home environment and on one memorable occasion, hold a student down while she had a covid test done (she was scared). It's all part of the job and definitely shouldn't be left to other students to do.

I loved boarding, had a great home life but asked to go after reading too many Enid Blyton books. Safeguarding was non-existent back then and as an adult I realise that some fellow pupils didn’t have a happy time but I thrived. My only lasting issue is my relationship with food after years of not having access to food and snacks when I was hungry or much say in what I ate.

* teenagers shouldn't really be each others main source of support*
Absolutely not. That is what good boarding staff parents are for.

Both of my parents boarded, as did all of their siblings (just under twenty individuals in total). Only one of my cousins was sent to boarding school, out of over sixty cousins. He ran away.

My dad and his siblings boarded in the 1920s and 30s, mum and her siblings in the 40s and 50s - the heyday of old fashioned boarding.

Mum used to threaten boarding school on us if we were getting seriously out of line. We had grown up reading Mallory Towers and all the rest of the boarding school canon and wondered what it would take to make her really do it, as it all sounded so gloriously wonderful. Obviously her own experiences at school during rationing in the late 40s had differed significantly from those depicted in the books we read.

Dad used to occasionally allude to beatings and a sense of terror, and was always on the side of the underdog, while mum guiding principle was that following the rules and never rocking the boat come hell or high water was always the best option.

I read it earlier and it's very sad.

I find the fact that boarding schools advertise for from age 7/Y3 even nowadays, absolutely mindblowing. Ds3 is 7 and I can't see how sending him to board now would be anything but abusive. Totally heartbreaking.

Very very few board under the age of 11/13

Of course. But if there are children in a boarding school, the staff are there to take care of them.

Many, many children want to be there. I've worked in those schools.

All of my siblings and me went to a boarding school. As did many people I know.

We live in a very vast country and was not unusual then, nor is it now. Travelling to school from home every day is just not possible for some.

I am in still very close contact with many of my class mates, and we are all really just very normal folk.

We are in our 50s now.

I have not seen the documentary, but also don't know anyone in therapy for being in a boarding school.

Yep, when people say "they wanted to go" as if that makes it better.
Its actually worse!

My husband opted to board on and off throughout his secondary years. He loved it! He lived local hence why it was optional though so was very much his choice.

Sometimes he was a weekly boarder so would come home Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, other times he would board for a day here or there. It really depended on friendships at the time and what was going on.

My dad told me that going to boarding school ruined his whole entire life.

Wanting to be there is neither here nor there. It's irritating living with parents and siblings, with all their faults and irritations, the various different things going on in a home and competing interests, and having to compromise and negotiate with the people who you love. That's what makes you a good and functional person, one who can build their own home with all this knowledge and care.

And you have to do all of those things when you board, it's just with peers not parents. Although you have parental figures in HouseMaster/mistress, matron etc

The men I know who are my age (50s) and older who boarded are profoundly affected by it — some would admit the damage (my best friend’s husband was sent away at 6), while others are largely unaware of the extent of their own emotional stuntedness and their reliance on coping mechanisms.

One would assume it’s better now, but a friend’s two sons who boarded at a famous school in the 2010s were involved in horrible dorm bullying, one as one of the bullies, the other (several years later) as the victim.

A friend of my DS’s just started to board aged 13 this past September, and he’s changed a lot in a few short months when I’ve seen him in the vac. Having been a rather gentle, emotional homebody who loved his cats, he’s now a very peer-identified, somewhat thuggish, mini-macho man. Hard to disentangle adolescence from the effects of boarding, obviously, but he gives every impression of being a child who has just had to learn not to cry, to do without home apart from one exeat weekend a month, to deny his gentler side.

I haven’t read the whole thread and don’t want to derail but something strikes me here. With the recent threads about damage to very young babies going to nursery (not knocking it, mine were in childcare young).

Most of the mums who did send very young babies to nursery defend it by saying their children are now academically/career wise successful, confident appearing children. As if that is somehow the measure of it not having been damaging.

As I say not knocking full time nursery for babies but have noticed that many of the ones that went to boarding school (including my FIL) had a sad experience but went on to become very success nonetheless, so his parents were happy with the result.

I was a boarder. I know I would have been a very different person if I had not, but I'm not sure if I would have been a happier or better person.

What I do know is that if I had gone to the local comprehensive I would have been bullied terribly, I wouldn't have done any work, and it would have not been good for me at all. I am speaking for myself here, not other people.

The best option for me probably would have been a fee-paying school as a day girl, but that wasn't a choice.

They are paid for carers and friends who will wash in and out of your life, it's a poor approximation of a family. Or, at least it should be.

“Institution” is a loaded word that I feel does not properly describe today’s boarding schools… but perfectly fits those of the 70s and 80s.

I think in that observation lies the key to your comment. Boarding schools are much more student-centered now, and provide many opportunities for enrichment so you don’t need to have a crappy home life to want to board… just the opportunity to do so, and a taste for adventure.

If the family and the child are in agreement, if they can afford it, they have the right to this type of education. Many children thrive from it.

You make the choices right for your family. Others make different choices.

But yes. The girl who made the abuse allegation to me, absolutely made the choice to get away from her family. It was in a country where the legal system wasn't as robust as the UK and it was a form of escape for her.