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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

How can you let your child go to boarding school?

479 replies

Jerem · 06/03/2018 22:27

I’m going to get flamed probably by the people who send their child to boarding school full time ..

But how could you?
How can you let other adults care for your child? Why did you send them away? Why have children and not have them in your home, give them their tea, talk everyday face to face. I don’t understand how anyone could do this. I really don’t.

Anyone care to explain how you can send your child to live elsewhere without you??

OP posts:
alpineibex · 07/03/2018 10:32

Cinderella

It's great your mother felt that way. Personally, I would never forgive them. But then, I would feel angry at just being sent away to a family member for the weekend so... I definitely would equivilent it to a lack of love in my head, and I highly doubt I'm the only person in the whole wide world who thinks that way about being separated from carers. I think your living in a cloud of you think all BS children come out of it emotionally unscathed.

user1474652148 · 07/03/2018 10:32

Boarding school offers more than just education, they can also offer values, resource, sporting and music opportunity and life long friends, networks and independence. Of course they can damage children as well, there may be bullying, loneliness and abuse.
Children can thrive anywhere with good care. Some boarding schools are amazing and nurturing. Not all obviously.
You may wish for your child to go if you feel it will benefit the child.
However I have chosen not to send my dc. I am very close to them and couldn’t bear to send them away, but if I was a different sort of parent I may have done. Lots of children thrive in that setting.

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 10:36

Do you even think the kids would feel the same when they realised it meant downsizing the house, losing the luxuries like holidays that they were used to, etc?

Yes, I do. I think some kids would rather the physical contact and security etc that they feel around their carers, the tangibility of it, than holidays and a big house.

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 07/03/2018 10:37

Interesting you mentioned networks

This is what is really meant by the old boy network and applies to mainly top private schools and boarding schools

To many on here it is just not part of our lives or seems important but it obviously is to some families

cinderellawantstogototheball · 07/03/2018 10:40

You sound as if you have some severe attachment issues, alpine. You would think your parents didn't love you if you went to stay with your grandparents for the weekend, so your parents could have a weekend to be themselves????? That's extremely needy and odd.

You don't stop being a person because you have children. That's a great way to breed resentment - which hardly makes for a happy family life over time!

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 10:45

You sound as if you have some severe attachment issues, alpine. You would think your parents didn't love you if you went to stay with your grandparents for the weekend, so your parents could have a weekend to be themselves????? That's extremely needy and odd.

I just think it's naive to think I'm the only child with issues, and idealistic to think that no parent with a clingy/needy child would sent them to BS. Confused

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 07/03/2018 10:47

I can’t see any atchement issues

Just someone who feels the best place for a child to live is with their parents or parent

Which the vast majority of people would no doubt agree with

cinderellawantstogototheball · 07/03/2018 10:47

I'd be very worried about a teenager who was so clingy that I couldn't let her stay at her grandmother's one weekend without her thinking it meant I didn't love her. Gosh.

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 10:47

to stay with your grandparents for the weekend, so your parents could have a weekend to be themselves????? That's extremely needy and odd.

No, but there was a court order than said I had to visit my mum every other weekend. I remember one time being dragged out of my grandparents car crying, because I didn't want to see my mum or stay with her, I was clawing at the back seats and still made to go. That isn't love. Love would be saying "screw the court order, we're taking her home with us anyway".

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 10:48

Because she needs us.

MasonJar · 07/03/2018 10:50

I think I'd have liked boarding school.
My parents had the option as father was in the army. We moved every 2 years, sometimes more often. If the British military school was full I'd be put in a temporary local school where few people spoke English. I'd been to nine different schools by the time I was 16 and never had a chance to make friends because my classmates were constantly arriving and leaving. It was soul destroying being a "new girl" so often.
My mother was like the OP, couldn't bear the thought of being parted from her chidren. Selfish, IMHO.

cinderellawantstogototheball · 07/03/2018 10:52

It sounds as if you had a very hard time then, and I am sorry about that.

But without knowing anything about the circumstances of why you didn't want to go, sadly it's not as simple as "screw the court order and if you don't, it means you don't love me". Contempt of court can mean a fine or even a prison sentence. It wouldn't have helped you if your grandparents had been sentenced to something like that.

tomhazard · 07/03/2018 10:52

My dc don't go to boarding school and I wouldn't send them but it's the right thing for me and my family.

But, as a non-judgemental and rational person I understand that all families are different and in some cases it's the most suitable option for a wide range of reasons.

So I wouldn't start a deliberately goady thread like this.

TheHulksPurplePants · 07/03/2018 10:53

Love would be saying "screw the court order, we're taking her home with us anyway".

No, that would be stupidity. The kind of stupidity that would see you taken away from them permanently.

SuperPug · 07/03/2018 10:54

Not right for everyone.
The "how could you?" is a bit dramatic. Not sure if you know many people who have chosen this route- army, jobs, many, many other reasons that I don't think you have considered.
Good for you that you have a job where you can be a SAHM for some time and then work fairly normal hours. Many people don't.

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 10:56

But without knowing anything about the circumstances of why you didn't want to go, sadly it's not as simple as "screw the court order and if you don't, it means you don't love me". Contempt of court can mean a fine or even a prison sentence. It wouldn't have helped you if your grandparents had been sentenced to something like that.

They should have taken the fine. They would have gotten away with it (knowing the circumstances), but chose not to.

Either way, my point is that I'm sure there are other children who are insecure or emotionally needy, and for them to be sent to BS because of a job or because it means a bigger house seems very shallow to me.

yolofish · 07/03/2018 10:56

EVERY SINGLE THING that fuckoffee said on p.11

TheHulksPurplePants · 07/03/2018 11:02

for them to be sent to BS because of a job or because it means a bigger house seems very shallow to me.

I would agree in that context. But what about children who are gifted, either intellectually or athletically, and would benefit greatly from BS? Do you really want to say to your DC someday, "Sorry DD, you could have gotten a spot at XYZ boarding school and learned from the best instructors in the country, if not the world, but mummy would have missed you."

Corblimeyguv · 07/03/2018 11:03

@Emmy, as PPs have noted, many military families choose boarding schools for their DCs. I don’t think it’s right to judge the (many) military spouses who choose to accompany the soldier- military families already deal with a LOT of stresses and strains. Judgemental threads like this just make that worse. I say that as someone with years of working with military families. They make a lot of sacrifices, they don’t deserve to be looked down at by you.

BertrandRussell · 07/03/2018 11:04

There are some sets of circumstances where boarding school is the best option. A friend of Ds’s has parents with very pressured long hours jobs, and he goes to school on Monday mornings and goes home on Friday evenings and that works very well indeed for them. And some children are safer at school than with their parents. And there are children so driven by their talent that they have to go to the school that can support them, whatever sort of school it is.

But I can’t forget Marcus Brigstock saying that you have to remember, when you look at the behaviour of people at the top of the Conservative Party that they had their hearts broken as children.......

TroubledLichen · 07/03/2018 11:07

alpine you’ve obviously had a very tough time of it and you have my sympathies.

However, this is a thread about boarding school and if it’s upsetting you so much and bringing up traumatic memories relating to court ordered contact with your mother/your relationship with your grandparents (all of which is irrelevant to the topic being discussed) then you might be better staying off the thread altogether.

I hope that didn’t sound patronising, I didn’t mean it to be, your responses are just a little troubling.

thanksjaneshusbandatcaresouth · 07/03/2018 11:07

The idea that little Jonny is so clever he must go to boarding school is very unconvincing to me.

tellitlikeitispls · 07/03/2018 11:07

Opportunities? Education? Stability? Lots of reasons, but different for each parent. Mine sent me to boarding school because of the above. They thought it would give me better opportunities later in life, and fwiw I think they were right about that bit. It wasn't about 'sending me away'. My dad was in the RAF and it was paid for. They asked me if i wanted to go, and head filled with Enid Blyton type tales I said yes I did.

However. Whilst I didn't hate it (apart from the first year, when I was 10, which was not great) I couldn't do it with my kids. They are hard work, but the idea of them not coming home every night makes me a bit teary. My own early years (from 0 -9) were pretty fractured, and I think that's left me determined to give mine as 'normal' a life as possible.

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 11:07

*I would agree in that context. But what about children who are gifted, either intellectually or athletically, and would benefit greatly from BS? Do you really want to say to your DC someday, "Sorry DD, you could have gotten a spot at XYZ boarding school and learned from the best instructors in the country, if not the world, but mummy would have missed you."

I have said, if it genuinely is going to benefit the child, fine. I just struggle to believe that every parent is coming at it from a "best for the child" point of view, or aren't trying to make up for emotional detachment with money and academia, or would pull their DC out if they realised it wasn't working for them. I struggle to believe that it's only well-adjusted want-to-be-there kids that go to BS.

alpineibex · 07/03/2018 11:08

Sorry for all the bold fails!! Confused