How can you let your child go to boarding school?

[Jerem]

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??

It's amazing how quickly your principles go out of the window when the school fits your child like a glove.

My life revolves around my children.

Here, have a medal 🥇

Blastomama my qualifications in talking about this is knowing a lot of people who gone to boarding schools through social circles and going to 3 myself and seeing the damaging effect it had on children first hand. Also being damaged by it myself albeit along with a lot of other stuff. I got send to one at eight and saw my mother every other weekend and I remember curing in the bathroom at night on my tenth birthday because my mum wouldn't come up and take me out for the day because she thought is was disruptive and to far away. Every single child there cried and had homesickness sometimes. I think it's very damaging and wrong and un natural.

So...none then. Personal experience is meaningless in context. Other children flourish in that environment and are very happy.

People are speaking about teens and young children as if they are the same thing. Young children need a lot of comfort and close contact and it is right that parents are very involved in their lives. That doesn’t mean they will be the same when they are teens.
I wouldn’t want my young child’s source of physical comfort to be a paid employee for most of the week. An employee that could change at any time if they found a new job. To say that is healthy from an attachment perspective is simply not true. Your child’s welfare should be more important than money.

Blastomama they might seem happy to you who sees them once in a blue moon, but they're children and children need parental love and care to grow and develop well. It is just my opinion from the many people I have met and it's not hard to see too if you look at all the boarding school educated public figures around us. Disconnected and often quite sociopathic. Not always but most of the time/almost all of the time.

Blastomama they might seem happy to you who sees them once in a blue moon, but they're children and children need parental love and care to grow and develop well. It is just my opinion from the many people I have met and it's not hard to see too if you look at all the boarding school educated public figures around us. Disconnected and often quite sociopathic

YOU don't get to decide everyone else children are damaged or unhappy. You are also wildly unqualified to diagnose anyone as sociopathic.
Wind your neck in and realise that you can only speak for yourself.

I can completely understand why people do it.

It gets such a bad reception on here though.

Blastomama I said it was just my opinion just as what you say is only your opinion. Why should I wing my neck in? This is a public forum. Can you read? You sound like a hypocrite who thinks she's right about everything and no one else should have a say. I'm glad not to know you in real life.

OP I'm not sure why this topic is of any concern to you. As a nursery nurse, you are unable to ever be in a position to consider boarding school for your children.

I don't give a any thought but when it comes up in conversation I do feel sorry for the kids and the adults they become.

I appreciate free will though.

People are speaking about teens and young children as if they are the same thing.

I agree.

Obviously the OP posted to be goady rather than explore the concept of boarding. But there has been as much goadiness on the boarding side as the OP's side.

In any event to me there is an enormous difference between boarding under age 12 and boarding age 14-18. I would have considered boarding for my high school children - in fact dd goes to a boarding school as a day pupil (no desire to board though) and several of her friends boarded for high school. Boarding age 14 is radically different to boarding age 8 or 9. These are really two different discussions.

I imagine it is highly unusual even in the UK to board at 8 or 9 these days - it is surely almost unknown outside of UK/colonial UK territories. If you told someone in the US that you were sending your child off to board age 8, their jaw would drop - even if they were of the tribe that will send junior off to Philips Academy or Milton or where ever for high school.

OP I'm not sure why this topic is of any concern to you. As a nursery nurse, you are unable to ever be in a position to consider boarding school for your children.

Really? No bursaries for really clever or talented children? No state boarding schools for children with special requirements? No state boarding schools for her children if she marries someone in the forces?

All these cheap shots on both sides are so tedious.

Catslife - I know Dd is lucky. For her it’s only 45 miles each way.

She’s going to be staying there during the four weeks of gcse exams though.

I know some people whose kids board in the week and come home on weekends- basically because their parents travel a lot for work (their own business) so rather than getting someone in for overnight supervision it's easier for them to stay at school. They are with their friends and they also get included in the extra curricular activities and general socialising that the day pupils miss out on. When I was at school we did take the piss out of boarders and say they were only there because their parents didn't like them, but they gave as good as they got (girls schools get very bitchy!).
Another reason to board is if you want a particular school and you live too far away. I have known some kids board because they got into particular specialist schools and it wouldn't have been fair for the rest of the family to move. You do whatever fits your family- not everyone feels the need to hover over their children like a looming spectre until they go to uni.

Sorry cannot do the bold thing! I know the school linked and of others. Unfortunately the way the system works makes it very difficult for this to be an option for looked after children. Not because of the school, or that their parents, carers or social workers would not be open to it. It is all the layers above that dictate how these children, who have the misfortune to be looked after by the state, should live. All the alternatives that must be explored first. By this time it is often too late.
I am sorry to seem negative but it has been a particularly bad day. Today the decisions of senior management have, in my humble opinion, totally fucked up the life chances of 5 kids I have been working with intensively for 18 months. But what would know (even though I am the only one who has met them and talked to them about their life and aspirations every week for the last year and a half). Sorry totally off topic!

Very common in parts of Australia (where I'm from). If you live in Mt Isa or Broken Hill, or some other far flung part of the country, your child is not going to receive the quality of education there that they would receive in a city, so you send them to boarding school.

I've never been in that position, but it was the done thing in the family my grandmother remarried into, and it was the done thing in those areas.

That's a stupid question!

My partner boarded at his request from 9, he loved every minute of it, made lifelong friends and experiences things his parents couldn't offer.

He was a weekly boarder and went home on weekends often taking friends with him who were to far away to travel home to see their own families.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it wrong.

I went to boarding school, and my kids will. DC1 will start in September. It's not full time. It's Monday to Friday, but here's why:

1. The standard of education at this particular school is superior to the others in our area.
2. DC1 has some issues. The other schools want to put him in their special needs program, the boarding school are working out a support plan to help him achieve a full mainstream education.
3. The boarding house provides a routine for homework, and bring in teachers to give extra support. So if my kid was struggling in math, a maths teacher comes in during homework time to help me.
4. Other schools in the area want me to choose his subjects now before he starts. Boarding school lets him try out every subject before choosing the ones he wants to do for exams.
5. The students at the boarding school are much more confident. They're prouder, maybe? I don't know, but they stand up tall, look you in the eye and have a conversation with you.
6. They have a massive program of social clubs, both in the school and in the boarding house.
7. My kids want to go. They looked at all the schools, and got a better feeling about it.

For me, given the options we have in our area, it's a no brainer. Why wouldn't I want them to get the best possible education?

I'd love my son to win a place at boarding school. Where I am it is scholarship only so you can't buy a place as such. But he doesn't want to go . I think it'd be fabulous for him.

I take particular issue with this post from you, OP, when responding to pp’s points about some military families boarding their children:

And a mobile job is still a choice. I’d rather be on minimum wage than live without my children rather than have a job that’s mobile and not even be able to share the money or house I have with my children because of it.

Research shows that military children underachieve due to frequent changes of school. What do YOU suggest our military families do, OP, when their children get to an age where they are studying for qualifications and changing schools or even countries (eg England to Scotland where it’s a different system) because the soldier is posted there without much choice?

Does the spouse stay with the children, move with the soldier (bearing in mind there may be other children) or board the child at a pivotal time in their academic career.

Or should the family never have had children, is that your point?

What a spiteful post, OP. Shame on you.

OP very few parents choose boarding school because having dc doesn’t fit in with their lifestyle. But I doubt you know anyone who has dc at boarding school.

It’s generally because of these reasons:

1. the education is of a higher quality or offers a specialist that can’t be found at local school eg equestrian training

2. the family lives in a remote rural location, or moves a lot ie military

3. the parents can afford it.

Thanks PorkFlute. My child's welfare is dependent on the money I earn whilst he is with 'a paid employee for most of the week'. I suppose that in your eyes, I should not have had a child if I couldn't afford not to be at home with him during his younger years. Well congratulations for being in such a privileged position and for making others feel wretched for it. You are as bad as the OP.

At least my DS will learn from me not to be so judgemental about the lives of others.

Some people genuinely don't want to have the stress of their kids at home. Just the way it is.