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?

So what you are saying then is that I dont know what I am saying and that I am screwed up?

That I didnt enjoy my boarding school years? I just think I did because I am emtionally screwed up?

That my DD never did want to go to BS? I also imagined those seven months of discussions beforehand?

That my DD is miserable and unhappy and just putting on an enthusiastic front for my benefit?

Of course - I am a past BS pupil - so I have no right to an opinion. I simply must be screwed up emotionally and just not know my own mind.

Swallowed, I cannot express how screwed up it seems to me to get divorced for the sake of the children?

I have dealt with the separation for years on end and believe me, it gets wearing after 4 years plus. I fail to see how having a military career is incompatible with raising your children healthily - please explain. Being joined at the hip and totally sublimating all adult needs to those of a child seems very unhealthy to me. Choosing and ensuring that your child attends a boarding school at which they are happy and settled isn't 'dumping' them at all, any more than it would be sending them to university, which is in reality boarding school for bigger kids.

'leading to unsurprising lack of empathy and attachment to, or valuing of attachment of, their children' I am way too attached to mine as he is an only, that is why he is going to UK to board at 16, to cut the apron strings and get ready for Uni.

What really pisses me off about this thread is that those of us who are pro boarding realise that it isn't the choice everyone would make. Those who are anti, excoriate those who use boarding schools or approve of them as neglectful, emotionally cold parents, when actually nothing could be further from the truth. I've met some pretty detached, neglectful and abusive parents as a form tutor at a comp, so don't kid yourself ladies that non boarding families are perfect, because they are not.

I agree with you scary and they talk as though children are dropped off at boarding school never to be seen again by their parents. I loved boarding school, but that in no way means my life at home was unfulfilled.

Next they'll be saying that you must be a bad parent if your DC enjoys nursery.

'it's... sad. and it's unsurprising that these people sometimes then repeat the same patterns as they're incapable of bonding effectively with their children having not had a real family life modelled for them and seeing it as dangerous or bad to be too attached to one's kids and wanting to hang onto their contemporaries (from schoolmates to husband) instead of their children.'

I don't want to hang on to my child, I want him to leave home, go to Uni, forge an independent existence and only come home when he needs a hug, money or his washing done. I want him to come home because he wants to, not because he is stifled and his Mum is hanging on to him. It is possible to be too attached to your children and to swaddle them too much.

Define 'real family life' please.I didn't realise that there was only one kind of family life.

LeQueen, I did the separation for 4 years when ds was young. Now he's 15 and will board at 16 when he starts sixth for, and need to learn to cope without me.

hmmm slaves then??

You've defined family, not family life, which is different.

LeQ, people do feel that bond with their kids, but it may also be that for whatever reason, boarding school works for that family at that time. A colleague of dh's had to put his kids into boarding school after the death of their mum whilst he was at sea. Their gp's couldn't cope with them, and it was better for them to board until he decided whether to leave the Services or not.

Kids at uni may be legally adults, but they're not quite there mentally, ergo boarding school for older children.

People don't have to defend their right to send their child to board; it is their right to do so, and also their choice. It is not your choice, but it is theirs. What is to to you that they do so? It's not illegal or immoral. I feel for the poor kids who have a high flying mum, and who are constantly left with the Nanny whilst Mum runs her company.

Your ideal of how to mother may not be everyone's; I was quite happy to leave ds in the care of his grandmothers from an early age for a fortnight at a time from when he was about 2, and they lived 3.5 hours away from us.

Swallowed, I consider my Mum part of my family, but we don't live together, neither do I live with my db who is also part of my family.

Having seen the descent into hellish behaviour by some students who were fostered because the foster cares couldn't deal with the experiences of the child, the behaviour of the child, or abide by the rules that had been laid down when they fostered the child, I thought at times that a residential school that dealt specifically with abused children might not be a bad idea. I have a friend who works in a special school for lads with EBD, for whom there is no other place in the system and it is full boarding. It works.

goodbye you really appear to be completely blinkered! Some careers don't allow years off without significant retraining. For example, as a nurse I would have to undergo 6 months on a training update if I waited for both dds to go to school. I chose to go back to work when dd1 was 6 months but couldn't handle the separation. DD2 was 22 months when I started training to be a health visitor. It was either do it then or risk DH getting posted somewhere too far away from a suitable university and missing the opportunity. Staying at home is fine, however, when you have trained hard for 3 years to become a nurse and then have children, there is no way I would give all of that up. I have just completed my PG Dip in Public Health and dd1 is at school (now 5), dd2 is almost 3. It was hard working full time and studying for a year, yet I feel this sets a good example to my children to aim high and achieve .

As many people on here have said, living just for your children is not healthy. Balance is needed.

On the boarding school issues that is also true. If there comes a time when dd1 and 2s education is at risk of being disrupted then they will be offered, not forced, to go to boarding school. They will decide and not until they reach secondary school age.

It was a valid point regarding children who are focused from a young age and following their own agendas. Lots of children direct their own activities, my own dd pursued trampolining every saturday from age 3. She was always given the option of not going, yet she always chose to go and was very good at it. Since starting school she does not want to go and nor has she been directed to carry on. Choice seems to be the key to happiness regardless of parents wishes!

Am an hour ahead of you lot, so have to go to bed. Resume tomorrow.

S'extraordinary to see how many people who know fuck all about boarding schools pontificating at length about how evil they are ...

Think it's cos they can't afford them. Either that or they're ignorant fuckwits. Because the debate never has been about sending 7 year olds to boarding school. The figures quoted show that less than 200 7 year olds board, and those for very good reason, presumably (or would the fuckwits like to step up onto the soapbox again?)

I can't see the justification the the current levels of funding for boarding schools for any amount of forces children. I believe they are going to cap it/reduce it now, but in the past it has been unnecessarily generous. I agree with LEQ that the priority of the mother should be to stay with the children, not the husband. However, as that seems to be an agreement among forces families that boarding is entirely necessary then why does it need to happen by paying for or subsidising very expensive public school places?

Why can the government not set up a few state boarding schools exclusively for the use of forces families and any other public sector workers for whom boarding is deemed entirely necessary? The children would have the continuity it can be argued they need, but surely that would be a much cheaper solution that paying through the teeth to send them all the very expensive public schools?

The few state school which currently offer boarding are about half the price of public schools as you are only paying for the boarding aspect, and not the education. And the parents would not be expected to pay anything at all.

Yes of course they wouldn't be lovely all singing all dancing socially elite ivory towers - but why should they be, if the state is paying?

Anyone who then decides that the state supplied forces school is not good enough is welcome to pay 100% of their own fees elsewhere - just like the rest of us who feel the state sector is lacking.

(Has very strange feeling that whilst that may make perfect sense economically and practically it will prove to be a massively unpopular idea among forces parents whose offspring are currently lording it up in posh schools they would not ordinarily be able to afford. )

We are all different. I don't think we should remvoe children from parents who send them away but I do think even if being sent away harms 1 in 100 children only then as a parent I would not recommend taking that risk. As someone posted above if home life is pretty terrible then even under 13 it might be best to be away from it.

The army issue is not the main issue for most people (and many people leave the forces because they love their children and want to be with them).

However on topic are the real issues which are nothing to do with quality of duvets and weekends home but about losing some influence over teenagers, the forging of relationships with friends in place of parents and siblings and the long term consequences of those different bonds, the distancing. We are all closer to those with whom we spend most time. Also many of the boarding schools cannot fill places (I don't mean Eton etc). Large numbers are packed with Chinese and Russians not that there's anytyhing wrong with the Chinese and a good few do not have that brilliant results although of course some do.

So you buy the ability to damage your child for life and sometimes even get for them worse exam results than they might get had you moved to near a good academic private school. Pretty poor deal.

As for suggestions children who don't board can't cope at university that just isn't so. My older 3 had no problems at all with cooking and managing washing etc.

Some boarding school survivors are remote - the people they love sent them away so they find it hard to get close to others again. They have a veneer of superficial jollyness but underneath they have colsed everything in. They talk about I survived it. I got through it. Why should education be about endurance and toleration.

www.boardingschoolsurvivors.co.uk/extract_1.html

The school I'm considering for Ds said that a child coming from an unhappy home life wouldn't do well at boarding school. They stressed that one of the key things for a child to enjoy boarding school is for them to come from a caring and supportive environment where they have a happy home life, ie boarding school isn't a fix for an unhappy home life.

That makes sense to me. If a child isn't confident and secure in their relationship with their parents then going to boarding school could feel like a rejection. The adults I know who hated boarding school are those who had, and still have, difficult relationship with their parents.

Some friends of ours have recently sent their year 7 child weekly boarding. His weekend is very short as he has to have lessons on Sadurday mornings, so by the time he's home it's mid afternoon, then he leaves again early eveing on Sunday.

So far whenever we see them I say to his parents 'how is he getting on?' and they say 'Oh he's having a blast. It's so good for him. He loves it.'

And my son says to him 'How are you getting on?' And he says 'I hate it. I don't have any good friends, I miss home, my parents promised me if I didn't like it after a term I could come back to my own school, but every time I ask them they say 'give it a bit longer' and keep moving the goalposts.'