To think boarding schools are an expensive version of neglect? MARK 2

[colditz]

LeQueen "Can someone please explain to me why living apart from your DH damages your marriage...but living apart from your children doesn't damage your relationship with them in anyway?

Please ...I genuinely don't understand."

Because your children can't have an affair, LeQueen

I thought this thread had ended and just spotted part two.

Still cannot really see anything new mind and I still feel sending under 10 year olds to BS is wrong for their upbringing.

Also I feel if any child over 10 is begging to go BS I feel something must be lacking in the parenting.

So as I said days ago if a child really wants to go to boarding school it may be the best place for them as they obviously are missing something in their life that the parents won't or can't give them.

Asked my son last night what he thought [aged9] and he was horrified at the thought of living away from home and said and I quote.

''maybe some want to cause the mums don't look after them well''

"Shut off. Appear happy. Keep busy." That describes a number of adults I know who went to boarding school Barcus - you have summed them up in a nutshell.

jscot - that doesn't sound at all like the lives of RAF spouses that I know. And many of them have both husband and wife in the force, one of them (shock horror!) even has wife of higher rank! Eek!

Oh dear Maryz, that is a very tough situation. Are you getting any help with your DS?

I htink it is fair enough, tbh.

If a person is needed abroad, to serve their country, and they need/want stability of education for their children (due to moving around a lot - I was a forces child, i know what it is like. I never lived in a house fo rlonger than 2 years when I was growing up - moving around country to country).

It makes no difference whehter the spouse is working or not, or "available ot look after children" - the issue is that the children would not be getting a decent grounding - no long term friendships, no continuity of education - and this would be true whether the spouse was working full time or a sahm.

wrt to SN residential school being so very different - i am no longer sure that it is. I obviousl yhad ot look at it for very different reasons, but if we had been living in an insecure place when the children were school age, I might well have considered it in their best interests.

I owuld also have looked at all the other options, but again, life is not always as simple as "well, change your job then".

we have lived in soe places where I woudl not want to have my children educated/running around freely. should I (theoretically) have therefore home edded them, and restricted them in that way, or send them to boarding school where they get more freedom, more continuity etc?

as it happens, dh did just change jobs (well, moved sideways, in linked positions) so it no longer applies. but he may well be sent abroad again - and so it would become a consideration again (of course life is extra complicated as we now need to consider SN education too).

I didn't beg to go nor did it ruin any relationships. There is a middle ground.

I think it is hilarious the way some posters are so keen to polarise this issue.

the emotive language used wrt to having stronger bonds/attachments if not keen on boarding school, talk of children "begging to go away"

I mean, honestly, it comes across as though soem posters are worried about the depth of bond with their children, and cannot see how on earth it might survive the separation

Silverfrog what we were arguing was that if one spouse doesn't work then he/she should stay in one spot and look after the children, therefore giving the children continuity.

The same could be said silverfrog about the bond between husband and wife if people are willing to give up their children in order to protect it.

but how does that one spot come about?

it can be too expensive to maintain a home in another country so that the spouse and children get continuity.

and it is not always practical (or desirable) to have that one spot in the country of posting, whether for security reasons or other.

so what to do then?

it is not always a case of "sacrificing the childrne to keep your marriage"

Yy Silverfrog, it really is possible that fully functioning happy families might have the need to use a boarding school. And because they love their children and want the best for them will help make it work.

(too young/hideous bullying aside)

I rang the parents this morning and had a laugh and thought geez you are great. And other soppy stuff.

eg, writerofdreams - take my BIL as an example.

he was forces, and then seconded out to another country. stayed there a long time. he has 2 girls.

salary not enough to keep a home in the uk permanently. girls were abroad with him and SIL when tiny. and then boarding (not sure form what age. they were certainly both boarding by 11 though).

they were in a country where they woudl not have got an education - girls were not educated there beyond rudimentary reading/writing. the expat/international school was not good.

BIL still could not afford to have a home in the uk for them plus SIL. but he could get the majority of fees paid as part of his contract.

so what shoudl he have done? left his girls with precious little educaiton?

left his job, and come home on benefits?

neither a good option, really, huh?

or sent them to boarding schol, form a lovign and secure home, with a fantastic life both at home and at school? opportunities aplenty, and a brilliant life all round?

Are the forces that badly paid that they can't afford a house??

"Are the forces that badly paid that they can't afford a house?? "

Hahahahahahaha! Certainly they would struggle to afford a house in most of the UK. My husband is relatively senior and we had to squeeze quite a bit to get a three-bed, modern rabbit hutch in the west of Scotland.

"jscot - that doesn't sound at all like the lives of RAF spouses that I know."

I'm sure it doesn't - I wouldn't know as we're green rather than light blue. Each Service is different.

"When the children are small, they can often go with the parents. It is usually only the last 3 or 4 years of school, including gcse's and a-levels, where the child needs consistency of education, so often children will the board from say 14 to 18."

Most people we know board from secondary age. It's comparatively rare to board earlier than that.

"So the serving partner claims CEA and the trailing partner doesn't work."

Forces wives do work, whether they choose to follow the drum or not! It isn't simply a case of moving around = no job, staying put = job. The issue is continuity of education, not childcare. A wife who works or who stays at home cannot guarantee continuity if they move all over the joint and the alternative can mean the children seeing even less of the serving parent than if they were in boarding school.

Should Forces wives all be made to stay put and to stay at home just to appease you lot?

'So the serving partner claims CEA and the trailing partner doesn't work. Is that situation fair?' Yet again, WoD, you prove that you cannot read. Where have any of us said that all those wives whose husbands claim CEA don't work? My db claims CEA and his wive works f/t as a nurse for the nhs.

When my Dad claimed CEA for my db, my Mum was a civil servant full time, and I was a latch key kid.

Some wives may not work because they have been posted to an area where there are no jobs, or they are over/underqualified for those jobs. I can't speak fluent Flemish, so my chances of getting a well paid f/t job here are fairly slim. Even if I did, it would not benefit the UK coffers one jot, as I would pay Belgian tax, not UK tax.

'Should Forces wives all be made to stay put and to stay at home just to appease you lot?. Apparently so jcscot....in which case, perhaps they'd like to stump up for decent MQs.

Maryz: Even in the huge previous thread, no-one has criticised moving the whole family round for a peripatetic career.

A few do however seem to feel free to be very judgemental about those who make different decisions, and some comments were horrifyingly harsh (and some just kept repeating info which has been demonstrated to be incomplete or wrong).

The issue isn't tax scary, it's the fact that wives could be in the UK looking after the kids for free but instead the taxpayer is paying for them to go to boarding school while the wives go abroad and don't work.

but that is such a simplistic view, writerofdreams.

what about the cost of the school place, then?

or the working family tax credits/whatever/housing benefit. plus extra transport costs shipping working forces partner back home to see family/family out ot see working partner?

or do they not get added in to htis equation?

The cost of what school place silverfrog? (genuine question, don't quite understand)

As far as I know the forces do provide for the forces personnel and their spouse to come home so that cost is on top of the boarding school cost. The other costs you mention would be minimal in comparison to the cost of boarding school. Why would someone with working spouse qualify for housing benefit? And why couldn't the non-forces spouse get a part time job to contribute to those costs anyway?