To think boarding schools are an expensive version of neglect?

[WriterofDreams]

I don't get boarding schools at all. Especially for young children. I will never forget watching a documentary about 7 year olds being sent to boarding school and the fear and upset the poor girls went through being separated from their families. For what? The mums seemed to think the poor children's suffering was necessary in service of their futures. Surely it's more important for them to grow up in their families and enjoy their siblings? I don't have a huge amount of personal experience of boarding schools so I may be missing something important. I do know however know two adults who were sent to boarding school as young children and consider themselves seriously damaged by it.

Surely it's better for a young child to be raised by people who genuinely love them than by a house mother who may be kind and loving but who essentially is just doing a job? AIBU to see boarding school as a form of high class care system for the wealthy?

There was a really interesting thread on here about a year ago, where what seemed like hundreds of ex-boarder mumsnetters piled on, saying that their experiences of boarding school were dreadful. That at the time they thought they were happy but looking back they actually weren't, (they mentioned 'Stockholm Syndrome'), and that they are still resentful to their parents to this day, even though some were in the forces and 'had to'.

Funnily enough none of them felt they could ever do it to their children.

It was one of the saddest threads I've ever read actually.

I'll see if I can find it...

I can see the possible benefits of BS during your teens, although I still think relationships with parents during teens are v important, but hell would have to freeze over before I could even consider sending my young dds there.

There's a world of difference though, between a DC of eleven being sent termly boarding with one exeat til half term, and a fourteen year old doing three nights a week no?

I loved it but it really wasn't good for me! I would compare it to chocolate in that respect.

I think those parents who send their children to boarding school don't really understand what they are missing. It's not about clinging to our children. Its just the everyday experience of living with your own family. Also those parents who don't send their children away, don't really understand that maybe kids do enjoy it? I agree that sending a child away at 7 (without a bloody good reason) seems cruel.

Some posters have valid reasons for boarding but every single person I know who was sent to boarding school so young was not sent because there were underlying reasons - such as armed forces etc. They were sent because the parents wanted them to go to specific schools because it was a tradition.

However, I also understand that boarding schools are incredibly different now to how they were when my friends were young. The fag system, abusive prefects, cane and violence are hopefully gone. But come on, we all worry about bullying at school and our children's happiness don't we? It must be harder for kids not to know they can come home and get away from all that rubbish?

Its very interesting that when my DH talks to his parents and mentions how his letters home were monitored, and about horrid things that happened - they simply won't accept his version of events and say 'but you said you were so happy there.' they also say 'why didn't you tell me?' to which he responds, he was only 8. They are totally unable to accept negativity about 'their choice' to send him away to school. And I think that's the crux -

I stayed at home, I had negative experiences (and good) at school but my parents didn't feel so defensive and could listen to me.

I am a Housemistress in a girls' boarding school. We have girls who've are with us because their parents can't look after them due to alcoholism and drug abuse, girls who've chosen to come to the other side of the world from their parents in order to get the kind of education they want, girls who find that they get more work done at school because of the extra support they get from professional teachers on evenings and weekends, and girls whose parents live up the road but they just love being with their friends and taking advantage of the hundreds of activities that we do.

Ask any of my girls about boarding and the first word they say is 'community'. Their parents are not neglectful (and even those that are have at least made the decision to send them to people who can care for them) and their time at school, while never perfect (show me a school that is) is very far from neglectful. Boarding staff have a vocation to look after these children. It's not a job, it's a way of life, and it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done. To suggest the children are in anyway in danger of violence or emotional neglect is, frankly, insulting. We are trained to take care of them, and when they're homesick or lonely or having friendship troubles or any other issue, we are there for them.

My son goes to boarding school. He has to board as he is a chorister! I hated the fact he would board, especially as I only live five minutes away. He begged for the opportunity to be a chorister and knew boarding would be involved and wanted to do it, so finally I allowed him too!
He started when he was 8 and hd is now 12 he loves boarding it is the most amazing experience and he enjoys every second. I still hate it but have realised that he is so happy and doing what he loves, so I would be cruel if I stopped him.
We are now looking at senior schools and I am having huge rows with him as I have said I do not want him to board anymore and he thinks I am being unreasonable and that he really wants to board.
We get along very well have a very close relationship and I don't think I or he have missed out. I know if you asked him about boarding he would tell you he has been very fortunate and privilege and had a wonderful childhood because of it.......he certainly wouldn't tell you he feels neglected!!!!!!!

My housemistress (who is still in post at one of the most expensive co-ed schools in the country btw) was about as cold as it is possible to be! There were times, lots of them, when we all needed our mums and the housemistress did not even attempt to be human let alone kind! She was a career professional. She wasn't unkind but she wasn't any kind of substitue for my family.

That was the point I was trying to make earlier PippaandPolly-they fill a real need in some families.

Yeah - the boarding school enabled my parents to fit in with their friends who all sent their children to boarding schools too. The financial burden of my education nearly crippled them!

Agree 100% with LeQ.

I went to boarding school, and would never consider sending my children to one. To me that is an important and fundamental part of having children and is way above the considerations for any job that my husband might choose.
Why so? you might ask. My reasons are, that as parents the care of those children is yours, your responsibility, and your children?s needs have to come first. They are too vulnerable and their needs are not met by being sent away from their homes and their family.
It is the seemingly small things that matter. The daily getting up in an institution rather than in your own bedroom, the formality of meals, the lack of privacy and the timetable that intrudes into ever part of your days. This is an un-natural life for a child and into it they have to fit relationships, schoolwork, sport and everything else designed to keep them busy? a stated belief of boarding schools being, that to keep a child busy makes them happy.
It does not of course; without the support of home and love you have no one to talk things over with, so you have to cope with everything on your own. This can range from problems with friends, loosing pencils, feeling ill and needing reassurance and love, not understanding your homework, and having no help with projects or learning.

There is no loving interest if you do well or badly with your work or play; no love shown at success or commiseration at failure.
Children soon learn to withdraw from the parents who are not there to support them and although this is spoken of as ?independence? it is in fact a closeness that is lost forever.

No grand school buildings in the Home Counties or ?tradition? can make up those loses. You cope alone and take into adulthood a great sense of inner loss and emotional detachment.
Better, by far, to live at home with all the ups and downs of everyday family and school life and immerge as a whole and open adult.

I want to know if it's neglect when a child chooses to go? Even if they have a loving SAH parent, an older sibling who doesn't board etc.

My life would be infinitely poorer and much darker if I couldn't cuddle up with the DDs in bed on a Sunday morning

LeQ boarding school stops that how?!? That is ignorance. The vast majority of prep (7-13 year old) boarding schools, are weekly boarders. They are there on the sunday morning. You are just not having the battle with them to get out of the house on the Tuesday morning.

Do your children never ever have sleepovers elsewhere at a weekend??? Because if they have 4 a year they are away more weekends than the vast majority of prep boarders.

To clarify when I say they are there - 'there' is at home in your bed disturbing the Sunday morning lie in!!!

The thing is lequeen the parents who I know who have chosen boarding are nice folk. Not cold and detached. They're DC have been here for sleepovers and my DCs to their houses.

It's just that they truly believe the secondary schools they have chosen are the best in the world. They just want what's best for their DC.

Now I dispute that, as I would rather a lesser school and DC at home (am utterly refusing Eton, or Oudle)but tbf to those other parents they're not horrible. Actually, they're better then me in lots of ways.

Pippa I am sure you do an amazing job, my housemistress did. It says a great deal now that I see her a couple of times a year even now 25 years after leaving school = she replaced my mum for so many things.

For those who think that is great, it is, but don't you think it is sad that I have a better relationship with her than with my mother.

I think it's really sad when parents bang on about this independence issue as the be all and end all.

Why should a young child have to be independent?

Do people really believe that institutionalising your children is the only way to independence? If so they are clearly deluded.

There is a time and a place for independence. It should be a natural process that children start to crave as they get older, not something that is foisted upon them from an early age.

Their DC.

Oundle.

Eek.

At what age did you go byah?

I weekly boarded at 12 and that was not my experience.

I understood the reasons for boarding (lived too far from academic school to be day pupil) and it was beneficial and a good thing.

snap if I am honest and I know it sounds brutal, I would really question what we were doing and try to work at the child wanting to be at home.

byah, not my experience either. In fact, if I needed someone to talk to, a borrow of a pencil, someone to help with my homework, having help with learning or projects, all that was there in much more abundance at school than at home (and I come from a very loving, close family).

Again, I say,it depends on the family / school/ child

And I think 12 or 13 a better age to start than younger.

A question to those who boarded.

Do you think in this age of mobile phones/texts and emails, your experiences might have been different? I'm quite looking forward to wishing my son 'good morning' and 'good night'

I too am pretty much a sahm and his little brother is unlikely to follow him because, he's kind of average academically!

And it's been his choice all along, we visited the state comps as well as the boarding school, and all along he's said he wants to board, even though all of his friends are going to the local comps.

(I don't beat him - honest )

But you are all going for a perceived quantity not quality of time.

Do your children do no activities after school/weekends? Do they not go out with their friends at any point?

Is the only time they are away from you 9am-3pm Mon-Fri?

If that is the case they okay you get the quantity, but I feel sorry for your kids.

But if that is not the case, how can you say that you are having more time with your kids? When they return from school there are no activities to go to as they have done them all - horseriding/swimming/gymnastics/chess etc. They have socialised with their friends.

The time at home is family time.

Ignore everything else the 19 weeks of holiday over the 13 weeks gives them more quality family time.