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 ?

I think boarding as a teenager is very different to being sent at younger age, plus it depends on your personality. My Mum boarded from 13 and didn’t mind it; my cousins boarded as teenagers and also seemed to enjoy it. DD (19) wanted to board at a particular school but the fees were beyond us. DS, otoh, has never been interested.

I remember an interview a long time ago, with the chef Anthony Worrall-Thompson where he talked about being sent to boarding school aged 4 if I remember correctly.
It was horrific and he was obviously hugely damaged by it all.

Are you reading ANY of the other stories posted on this thread about the negative side, the abuse, the life long MH issues? Or just ignoring it all.

Ditto. OH had an absolutely awful time at boarding school. My mother was sent at 8 and it really damaged her . For some people it works but it’s a very unnatural thing to do to send a child away to live with strangers in an institution. I would never have done it with my children.

My brother in law went at 5! just bonkers. I boarded in the 90s from the age of 12. It was hard because my family was abroad so I went months without seeing them and as tech wasn’t what it is now we mostly wrote letters to each other, and had a fortnightly call where the signal was terrible so much had to be repeated. V awkward!

In any other context, if you talked about sending your child to live elsewhere for most of the time - away from their family - people would assume there was something seriously wrong with your priorities, you hadn't actually understood what parenting involves and/or that you were very disinterested, maybe neglectful parents.

But add schooling to the mix - something that most children get very successfully from various difderent institutions on a daily basis before spending evenings and weekends back with their families - and that suddenly makes it OK?

I wonder what the overriding view of such a set-up would be if it were mainly poor and working-class people who sent their children away - maybe if it were an available free option on the state for anybody who decided that they couldn't/didn't want to meet their children's needs with them living at home - rather than wealthy people, as now?

People who read the Financial Times are every bit as capable of being lazy, neglectful and/or abusive parents as those who read Take A Break.

I heard a very interesting R4 interview with a man who now goes around Boarding Schools trying to lessen their impact (although I doubt he calls it that in his marketing).

They might just have the personality for it. I'm the opposite.

I’m so sorry to hear this.

My own mum (now in her 80’s) once said ‘well at least my mum didn’t abort me, she sent me to boarding school instead’. It’s like she’s convinced herself her mum did the best thing she could. I remember my dad (a very gentle man who never said a bad word against anyone) once saying what an evil selfish women my grandmother was.

How can anyone send their own children away at such a young age? It seems incomprehensible?

When I first met my now DH’s parents - his mum told me proudly ‘I sent the children away as I had no choice’ (she had decided to be an army wife instead). Rather than (IMO) mother her own children. I’d seen the damage to the children - her own daughter is very LC with her and had a miserable time. From the age of 10 they saw little of their parents. Their mum and dad didn’t even go to their university graduations. Apparently ‘there was too much going on’.

I remember snapping back after she rolled out the ‘I had no choice’ line again - ‘well you did have a choice, as you could have stayed home and looked after your own children’. She looked at me aghast like it had never even crossed her mind.

I’m sure if children have the choice to go it is fine. But forcing children because of your own selfishness never works out.

What sort of personality makes you want to leave home at 12?
Where Home life is awful I can see the attraction of Boarding or if there is specialist sports, music etc provision but when I was at Boarding school over 90% of kids could have lived at home with their parents if the parents were prepared to make some adjustments to their lives

I have no personal experience of boarding school but I have a lot of colleagues and friends who have been and I would say that the vast majority have been damaged to some degree by their experience. Likewise my children have quite a few friends and relatives who have boarded in recent years and I don't think it's been plain sailing for many of them either. I was relieved that none of my children showed any desire to follow suit as whilst I can see that there are some advantages for some children, and that sometimes it may be a necessity, I don't think it is the best option for most children. I'd have considered it for 6th form if any of mine had been keen, but not before.
However, I don't agree with the oft quoted narrative that boarding school parents are lazy/uncaring/abusive. All the parents I know whose children have boarded have genuinely believed they were doing what was best for their children. I have a couple of friends whose children have gone to specialist boarding schools in order to get their talented children training of a standard that simply isn't possible where we live and they have really agonised over that decision. I'm glad I've never been in that situation.

However, I don't agree with the oft quoted narrative that boarding school parents are lazy/uncaring/abusive. All the parents I know whose children have boarded have genuinely believed they were doing what was best for their children.

There was a thread on here the other day where the OP had a friend look after her dog and then, when she had seen what she perceived as a better life that the friend could offer (the dog had a perfectly nice life already with her), she had therefore given the friend her dog.

I know that, with boarding school, you obviously don't give your children away and never see them again; but I think there is some measure of comparison to be observed.

Most people on that thread were opining that OP couldn't really love her pet that much to just send it away and out of her life like that.

How much of an improvement in a child's life happiness, opportunities or potential achievements outweighs the trauma of separating them from their parents for the majority of their time?

Place marking

I think boarding school was a dumping ground for children from very unhappy families sometimes though and it’s those kids you are now saying are like they are because of boarding school. I bet lots are ruined by the family they came from, not the experience of boarding school.

This is a good point @Yoheresthestory
I know a few boarders and all seem very normal well adjusted people but they went home regularly to loving parents and seem close now with their families. That was in 1990s.

I still can't get past the fact that they will be very aware once they enter the normal world that the majority of people grew up with parents that want to be around them as much as possible.

I would miss my teens so much if I didn't see them every day. They obviously don't want to be with me every day as is normal but miss me when I have to work away for a couple of days.

There any people I know that went boarding school really hated it or had bad relationships with their parents and felt it was probably better at school than it was at home.

My friends parents would have described me as “chatty and happy”. Boarding school kids are masters at masking. I’m not saying every single one is miserable, but I’d put money on it being more than the adults around them would be able to guess.
When I think of how much time I spend counselling my teens through friendship issues, social situations, anxieties, schoolwork etc…I remember that I did all of that alone from the age of 5. That’s just not normal and it’s not ok, even at 13+ kids still need that stability and unconditional love that school simply cannot replicate.

I was a day pupil in a boarding secondary Catholic school, not England. It was the last year of boarder intake when I went.

All the girls (girls only) were happy because it was by then weekday boarding.

Loved being friends with them because they had such a great time. However the boarding quarters were awful. Thin curtains, shared toilets. I couldn't do that.

The man I referenced earlier who now speaks on how to minimise the effects of Boarding school says that kids generally adopt a persona to survive and "happy and chatty" is a common one.

Oh that sounds awful.

My dad went at 7, unfortunately the headmaster was truly sadistic and got sent to prison for it.

In my experience boys usually find it harder than girls if it's at an early age, this is only a generalisation though

This might sound a bit silly, but I distinctly remember an old edition of Pointless - back when Richard did all of them and not just the celeb specials.

They had a question about schools and Alexander made a (slightly snobby) comment at the end, because Richard wasn't nearly as au fait with public/boarding schools as he was.

Richard responded by saying "My friends and I didn't go to boarding school - we went home at half-past three... to parents who loved us". It was said and laughed off in a good-natured way, but there was a look on both of their faces that was very telling.

I agree that lots of BS kids will be 'happy' with it for as long as they don't know any different; but when they meet a wider circle of people as they get older and discover that most of them got to live with their parents outside of school hours, I bet a lot get very resentful indeed.

The reports on here of indifference and even low contact in the relationships of parents and grown up ex-BS children doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Quite. My father was in the military and both my older brothers were born abroad. Once they reached school age my Mum was one of the very few wives who refused to send them back to the UK for boarding school. She actually wanted to raise her own children.

Years later, my Mum told me that so many of her friends on camp just chose to be wives rather than mothers, because in her words 'Children don't have affairs, darling.'

I agree with this.

That's also why the "but now there are caring staff" angle doesn't appear to me to completely solve the issue. I'd never have let a matron or house mistress (even the very most kind, present and loving ones) in on my inner issues/problems. I was pretending to be fine therefore I was!

Oof, that comment by Richard got me. The idea, as a child, of seeing someone who loved you every single day - that actually feels quite foreign to me.

Perhaps not quite the same thing, but I went to a specialist boarding school for blind children right through to my A-levels. It had high academic standards and combined a rigorous curriculum with support for students to develop daily living tasks. It was a great experience and gave me a lot more confidence. When I started university I felt a lot more equipped for uni life than many of my new friends, many of whom had never been away from home.
Of course I missed my parents but I had a lot of friends and the house parents did a great deal to make the school houses feel like home. I also flourished academically due to being able to access all school materials in an appropriate format.
The person who suffered most was my wonderful dad. We were very close and I know it broke his heart letting me go away to school. He really struggled without me at home.

caring for is not loving
Nobody who is paid to do so will ever be better at caring for a child than someone who loves them