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 ?

But I think that’s a classic example of a boarding situation which was able to meet your specific needs over and above a regular school, and equip you for life. The was a valid reason why your needs couldn’t be met at home.

I think 16 plus boarding is very different from 7 plus boarding. I think young children boarding is problematic, but teens is an entirely different kettle of fish, especially if they come home for the weekend and have endless opportunities/hobbies/friends at school. I think some of the top boarding schools in England look and sound more like Disneyland to me, rather than an asylum like certain people have you believe.

Of course they look and sound like Disneyland
They have large marketing budgets to make sure you think that.
Me and DD went to collect a young family member from a Boarding school about an hour from us for the weekend, as we arrived DD commented (to me only)
"I am sorry your parents don't want you to live with them, here is a life sized statue of a horse to make you feel better"

@Araminta1003 Yes, that’s exactly why my DD (then early teens) said that she would like to go a particular school after competing in some sporting events there! The place is gorgeous, amazing facilities and for an extrovert like DD, the idea of living in a dorm with other teenagers was very appealing, potentially more fun (in theory) than coming home to her parents and younger brother.
I think she viewed it as a continuous sleepover. 😂

But it was way beyond us financially anyway.

7 is so young to board my friend worked briefly in a boarding school and I think the children started at 5 this would have been the mid 70,s

Name-changed for this. My DH boarded from 13-18 at one of the most prestigious public schools in the country and was subjected to sustained and vicious bullying, some of which would be classed as sexual assault. This was in the 90s, so by no means the distant past. It had long-term effects on his mental health. I would never, ever subject my children to the same thing, and tend to view sending your kids to boarding school as neglectful if not abusive parenting.

My DH boarded from 8 and loved it. He had a chaotic home situation and school was a steady and happy constant. Similarly many of our friends who boarded from 13 all seem happy and many are considering it for their children.

I know of one person who boarded and hated it, but I suspect he would have been just as unhappy at home. His stories of his parents’ neglect go beyond his schooling.

For the right child, right reasons and at the right school, I think it can be a positive.

Our son boards and genuinely absolutely loves it. It has given him access to opportunities that he couldn’t have had locally. It was entirely his choice, if anything I was the most reluctant. I miss him dearly. We talk daily and we see him once or twice a week for matches / concerts and at exeats and obviously the many holidays and half terms. If he wasn’t happy or he just wanted to go to a day school we’d do that in a flash, absolutely no question.

@OneOffNameChange1089 That's horrible.

I’m assuming that his parents had no idea what was happening (if they did, that’s even worse)?

I spent seven very unhappy years at a dreadful boarding school. I'd never been there till the day I was dropped off by my family. I was ten. It was over a hundred miles from home and I didn't see my family for six weeks. I cried every day. The older girls told us ghost stories every night. The food was vile and inadequate. The school dr was a pervert who abused us, and some of the staff were bullies. I still resent the place and it cast a very long shadow over my life.
My children went to a day state school and I would never have subjected them to what I went through. Picking them up from the playground was the best part of the day.

A lot of unprotected sex and people getting expelled if caught ime.

My three siblings and I all boarded, between us we have lots of qualifications, plus 3 x suicide attempts, 1 x prison sentence, 1 x drug addiction, 3 x problematic relationships with food, 1 x functioning alcoholic and 4 x stiff upper lips. We also have 10 children between us - none of them have boarded.

I don’t know to what extent they were aware to be honest. DH understandably doesn’t like talking about it.

I went to boarding school and I have mixed feelings about it. This was late 80's / early 90s.

The impact that it has had on me is that I crave my own space, I can be superficially social, but I find it hard to share feelings with other people.

I put this down to having zero privacy or personal space at boarding school. The initial shock of sharing a dorm with 4 or 5 girls or having to 'bagsy' a bath and not have any real time to bathe and having only one small basket to keep your toiletries in is forever burned in my memory.

The friendships were intense and so was the fall out it if it went wrong.

IIRC most friendship fall outs were over girls crushing on each other. It was usually a younger girl crushing on an older girl in another year group.

The younger girl often became the older girls dogsbody. Changing and making her crush's bed for example.

That would not be allowed in any modern boarding school today, but
back then though fagging under a different name was rife in many boarding schools.

I got through and parts of my time away at school were fun, but looking at from an adult perspective I think I was too young to be sent off to school at aged 11.

In the era before the internet, writing letters home always used to make me cry, but to stop my crying I had to think of the next exe-at and count down the days until I could see my parents and sister again.

My mum always called them "orphanages for the rich"
😔

My DH and siblings all boarded in the 70s and 80s. Single sex establishments. I'd say it suited the girls better than the boys but they would all say it was OK. I think they're slightly brainwashed into thinking it didn't do them any harm but I'd say all but the oldest are lacking emotional intelligence. They also have complete confidence that they're somewhat superior and better educated than most.
Our DC are the only ones of the next generation (all adults now) not to go to boarding school and this raised a few eyebrows. However, our DC are much better qualified than all the others and we have a far closer relationship as a family. A couple of the privately educated cousins are in much better paid jobs though and have a social confidence mine don't really have. Another couple of the cousins got heavily into drugs at school and it's had a lasting impact. But that particular branch of the family have huge problems generally!
Interestingly, DH was at a reunion recently and talked about a number of the men going to great lengths to apologise to each other for their behaviour at school (especially bullying) and talking about their own insecurities. I pointed out to him that they've clearly had therapy to come to terms with their own experiences and how that influenced the way they treated others. It was like a light bulb went on over his head!

I remember my first night age 11 at boarding school. Sleeping in a dorm with 4 strangers in a building I'd never been too. All the strange noises. Having to comfort one of the girls who was hysterical for the next 2 weeks. Trying to smother and muffle my own tears. Exhausted and tired from not being able to sleep. Missing my dog. Wondering what my parents were doing. Queuing for the payphone, often to no avail. Trying to work out all the rules, the unwritten ones being even worse than the lengthy and often ridiculous written rules.

The only privacy or time to myself I even got would be sitting on the toilet or having a bath until someone would bang.on the door wanting to know when you'd be out.

The bitching from the elder girls if you were pretty and "their" boys liked you. The treading on eggshells trying to work out how you were meant to be. Trying to make sure everyone liked me and I was doing the right thing. Exhausting.

And then I went "home" for the holidays. And I didn't know anyone. I had nobody to play with and I soon dreaded holidays because I felt so lonely and unwanted. Really, only about 1% of children board and it can be very isolating. Through life I've had people gape at me when I mentioned boarding school and comments like "you must have been really naughty", "how could your parents do that", "that must have been awful" etc. You speak a different language at school: prep, exeat, gated, out of bounds .... God forbid you ever blurt that out in public.

Cigarettes and alcohol and drugs were rife. Underage sexual activity was rampant. Sometimes people just disappeared overnight. Someone you could have been good friends with just excluded and never seen again.

And yet, I was Fine. I got my head down. I worked hard and was kept very busy. I pushed my feelings down, as so many of us boarders do, and just got on with it. My parents would have said I was doing well and happy. They possibly still think that

Yet I'm in group therapy for ex boarders. Yes, such a thing exists. We all have very similar issues which revolve around cPTSD. We're hypervigilant, hyperindependent and cannot ask for help, nunb to our feelings, we tend to just shut down if we feel a difficult emotion. There are very commonly addiction issues, myself included.

I boarded in the 90s. I'm pleased to see this receiving the overage I feel it deserves. I know so many ex boarders who have been deeply affected and feel they have no voice. Because its seen as a privilege and it's so misunderstood and niche.

Imagine being a child and not seeing your family or pets for weeks. Not sleeping in your own bed or playing with your toys or going out on your bike. Eating what you are made to eat,.not what you fancy. If you feel ill then tough, the dorm is out of bounds - go to the San. If someone is picking on you, share a dorm with them. No-one asks you how your day is. You have bells going off at you from 7am til 9pm. Every minute scheduled and zero privacy. Wondering how if your parents thought this was right, then you must be very wrong. Tell me how that couldn't affect a person.

I am so so sorry for all the people who went through this, its heartbreaking.
I was a Day pupil at a Boarding school and saw it 2nd hand but I didn't have to live it

I'd love it if, just for a moment, the parents who claim their children "loved it" actually acknowledge a very sobering fact: most of us wait for ours to die before we speak up.

We were obliged to love it. We were told over and over it was a privilege and to complain would be a terrible betrayal. After all, we knew how much our parents sacrificed....

I was moreso wondering how much trouble you'd get in for hand holding or maybe snogging

I also only boarded for a while. My parents moved near to the school and I became a day pupil. I was happy to go away to board initially, there were good reasons for it, and I was excited, it seemed an adventure. For years later I would say that it was fine, and that I was happy. As I got older though, I started to see the ways in which boarding had damaged me and damaged my relationship with my parents. I feel really sad about that as I had a loving and caring family but it became normal to not share things with them, something that made a huge difference when I was struggling through my twenties. It’s not good to not have a parent around when you are 11, it’s not good to be spending all your time with people who don’t actually love you.
For all the ways in which people say boarding schools have changed, that fact remains. Nobody loves you.

And, in my experience, the ones who do ‘best’ do so because they’ve learned a lesson no child should have to learn — to live with homesickness, to switch off their feelings, to live in an artificial, institutional environment, to perform a publicly acceptable version of themselves for their peers, from whom there is no respite.

There was a strict no touching at all rule at my school and it WAS enforced
There were very few opportunities for mixing of the sexes but people still did it

My old boss went to a boarding school and he admitted that it really stunted him socially, especially with women (he went to a well known all boys boarders)

Womderfully put.

I was a day pupil at a private school that also had some boarders.One of my (boarding) friends admitted that from the moment her parents, oh so casually, floated the idea of boarding school to her, she knew they were very open to not having her in their lives for months at a time.

She described it as a type of death and that she grieved horribly for the relationship she'd thought she had with her parents.

My mother said to me that one day she decided to pretend to be happy all the time as that is what people seemed to expect of her and it would make her life easier. I actually think she’s spent her whole life pretending to be happy. I don’t actually think she’s knows what her real feelings are and hasn’t for a long time. Consequently she has a nasty spiteful alter ego who pops up from time to time. Completely at odds with the daffy, mouth open smiling slightly stupid persona she projects nearly all the time. I never felt close to her and always had the uneasy feeling that I didn’t know who she was really.