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?

And ROFL at being in the military being compared to being black. That is almost as absurd as the NM baby posse woman comparing being chucked out of Starbucks with being black. :o

And I have given up my highly paid City job because it's not that compatible with being a decent parent.

Being black isn't a choice. Being in the military is.

They get slaggged off more than most NotaMopsa-I don't think they are immune!

PROBLEM SOLVED - for military boarding families. I have a solution......

All recruits joining any of the 3 armed services should have a vasectomy or hysterectomy.

Simples!! Wonder why no one has come up with that idea before?

What fantastic posts from Scary and Lolly.

I am proud to be a forces brat too....

And please forcibly remove me if I comment further as I had my share of grief last night.....

Your parents could have chosen not to drag you all over the world of course Christine by either not procreating, or by sending you to boarding school.

Thanks so much for suggesting that my fil, dh, db, dbil, dsils, dnephews and niece, myself and my son should never have been born.

Brilliant post Lollybrolly.

Oh for god's sake scaryteacher - what's with this crap about never having been born? That's just silly and melodramatic.

Personally, I hated my parents moving about. I'm sorry if that offends you. Yes I could have gone to boarding school but as you will see from my earlier post in the thread, my elder sister hated it so I didn't want to go. Why would I want to spend most of my time in a country I didn't understand with people I didn't know? At least I knew my family, wherever they happened to be.

But no, it wasn't fun. Maybe your family love it but mine didn't.

Why is pointing out that you are being discriminatory by saying the military shouldn't have children a matter for ROFL? I hope you weren't involved in HR in your city job, you'd have opened your mouth to change feet.

So you gave up your job? Presumably, your dp was there with money to support you - the point being many military families only have the one income as the wives find it hard to mange a career as they move often.

scary teacher "I don't care if you get the justification for the military or not. If you think anyone is going to throw up an extremely good salary, professional development and pension because they might have to send their child to board, then you are barking, especially in the current economic climate"

this just proves what has been said earlier about priorities....

I can't see the fuss. It is a choice of school. It suits some DCs, it doesn't suit others. It fills a need for some families.
If you are against them then you are not going to send your DCs!
Everyone is different-one size never fits all. Even within the same family one DC may love it and one hate it.

It is the same with any form of childcare-someone decides for themselves and then judges everyone else!

You said the military should not have children, my fil and Dad were military, so that's all our families who shouldn't have been born according to you, and neither should my db's kids as he is military, nor should my son, as dh is military too. Either you meant it or you didn't; I am merely pointing out what your edict means.

Kitkat, priorities in what sense? Maintaining a home and lifestyle for ds without recourse to state help; ensuring that when dh leaves the RN we have our own home and don't need housing; being able to get ds through uni without loans- those are our priorities.

mathsanxiety
'Candleshoe and AlbertCamus -- your observations about drugs and drinking ring a bell with me. A friend I went to school with to 15 attended an Irish boarding school in the Dublin area as her parents were abroad, and her stories of the goings on there (and this was way back in the late 70s and early 80s) would have put even the edgy crowd at my school to shame. My cousins emerged without any major addictions from their boarding school but plenty of their classmates fell by the wayside.'

This is a major issue in boarding schools, one which neither staff nor parents want to face.

The ridiculously expensive vegetarian child-centered boarding school up the road from me experienced a (allegedly stoned) student wandering into a road and getting killed by an innocent motorist some 15 years ago ... and the drug reputation persists. I taught disaffected state students who graphically described the situations the 'posh kids' got into in town en route to McDonalds where they were stocking up on junk food, as teenagers always will, at the hands of the local kids. The reason they recounted these events was that they, the state students, felt incredibly sorry for the poor little wannabe Gothics who desperately wanted to 'hang out' but were easy prey to all and sundry ... while their 'right on teachers' with whom they were on first-name terms, were clearly oblivious to what they were experiencing. Interestingly, this same school's pathetic efforts to justify its charitable status by 'offering the use of its facilities to less fortunate students' was not well received by the local community, who were understandably not keen on the idea of their kids setting foot in the place !

It's time for the people involved in supervising boarders 24/7 to wise up and accept the world we're living in, and what is really required to protect children while in loco parentis. I don't believe they do this sufficiently for the childrens' protection.

but you can fulfill those in other ways surely if you wanted to? like in my earlier threads my brother left after 16 yrs and joined the police after having children- moving through the ranks much quicker, he has his own home etc. Im not saying it's bad for military to use boarding schools as i'm sure many families have used them, (and of course they should have children!) but they do make that choice based on what lifestyle they want - my point is that if you use them because you think they are okay then say so - don't need to say 'they are the only solution and we have to' because you don't

High flying city types who employ a Nanny and don't see the kids except when they're asleep.

Women who have to go back to work to make ends meet.

Women who acknowledge that their marriage is as important as their children.

Until you have done years on end of weekending and separation, you will not understand. It's not about making life logistically and socially easier; please explain how having kids at boarding school is logistically easier when you are toing and froing to the UK for exeats, half terms, sports matches, school plays, end of term, start of term, half term etc, and it makes not a whit of difference socially.

I send my DD because I do think it is OK.

Like I said. I enjoyed it. She is definately happy.

In addition - she gets stability and continuity.

I have also said I fully accept its not right for every child and every family.

Oh and my DH is not even an SNCO. He is what is known as junior ranks = shit pay but he is good at what he does and well trained in his field.

agree swallowed, this is likely to go on forever! people obviously have different relationships with their children, some closer than others

Not as simple as that Kitkat, depending on your specialisation. Not many nuclear submariner jobs to the pound in civilian life. The engineering challenges are not found in civilian life either. You also do not get the range and breadth of jobs you get in the military.

Sometimes, boarding schools are the only solution; personnel who have secondary school age children at one base in Belgium either have to serve unaccompanied and only see their kids when they can afford to get home, as the travel back to UK is not subsidised at all, or their kids go off to board at a Forces boarding school in Germany and come home at weekends. When that school closes in a couple of years, then there will be a major issue about serving at that base.

We haven't sent ds to board as there is an International school where we are and he goes there. However, he will go back to UK at 16 and board for sixth form to provide continuity as I am not prepared to move him mid A levels.

My life has been infinitely richer thanks to the excellent education, resilience, social skills and imposed routine at the boarding school I attended between 1976-82. It had changed little since Victorian times, and gave us a structured, predictable, secure world in which we were happy, healthy and independent.

However, I would NEVER have sent my DCs, born in the late 80s, to any boarding school, as by this time, the utterly misguided child-centered ethos had destroyed all that created and perpetuated the security and excellent start that I had.

Given the very dangerous world in which we are living today, quite apart from the separation anxiety issues which have been discussed, children need a person who LOVES them as a parent or full time carer and KNOWS them intimately to monitor their adolescent lives to ensure their safety in terms of the temptations which are out there.

In this discussion,there's none so blind as those who don't want to see ...