How ever you want to dress it up there is no getting away from the simple fact that your child will detach from you emotionally. As parents you probably won’t see it. You will possibly see a really well behaved kid on the weekends and holidays you get together. You will receive letters and emails telling you lots of lovely things. Your kid is amazing, loving school, getting on really well. Boarding school is the best thing you’ve ever done for them.
This is classic behaviour of the emotionally detached kid.
Most kids at boarding school worry about their family and pleasing them. They worry if they are not perfectly behaved on an outing with their parents, the parents won’t take them out so often. They worry if they are grumpy and stroppy on holiday, they will get sent to the dreaded Summer school. My parents never did this, but I constantly thought it. And so did my friends. And so for the most part I behaved like a great child when I was with them.
The times we were together were weekends and holidays. It was not real life. It was all special things, lovely trips, restaurants, hotels. They bent over backwards when I was with them to make everything as lovely as possible. But it was not real life. It wasn’t the normal me or the normal them.
My parents moved house last year and I came across some of my letters to them. I vividly remember writing some of them. It was not me. It was a sanitised version of me. No sadness, no homesickness, no worries. All happiness, playing with friends and good grades. I remember being told by my house mother not to write about sad things that would upset my mum.
I started my periods at school in the October. The school nurse helped me. I was 13. The Summer after I was 14 my mum asked me if any of my friends had started theirs - sort of edging towards the fact that she thought I should have started them by now. I’d started them a good 9 months earlier. I wasn’t sure at what point I should have told her, or even if she needed to know.
If you would have spoken to my parents at the time (and even now) they would say boarding school was great for me. It gave them a very pleasant home life. They never had to deal with my teenage crap. In fact I’m not sure they even realised I was going through teenage crap. To them I was well behaved and got good grades. They would say we are a close family and always have been.
If you’d have asked me as a kid did I like school I would have said yes. To say no would have felt wrong. School became my family and so of course part of me loved it. I had some great times there and lots of it was fun. But I missed my parents every day. I felt a sense of abandonment that still lingers with me today. They also don’t really know me. They know the good, sanitised version of me. I didn’t want to let them down, to disappoint them and to fail. This is a very common thing amongst boarding school kids.
Old habits die hard and I don’t think I’ll ever just be me with them. They think we are close and they know me. I love them very much but I don’t feel close, never rely on them emotionally and they really really don’t know me.
Boarding school is probably a good option for those with a disrupted home life. If you can at all help it, my advice to anyone who is listening is don’t send them. You will lose a huge part of your child that you may never get back.
There are many positive things about boarding school. The education I got was great. I became very independent and resilient from a young age. But was it worth it? I’m not sure it was (god I hope my mum isn’t on mn reading this!)
Sorry that was a bit long. Well done if you managed to read all of it!