Boarding school for 7yr olds.

[Patchworkpatty]

This is not a TAAT but follows on from one earlier today where I appear out of step with the majority posting there. So want to ask the AIBU vipers opinions.

While discussing the other thread it lead me to do some internet investigation about the age of children in boarding schools in this country - and was horrified that there are many prep schools that offer 'full boarding' (not weekly and home weekends) from the age of 7 ! I am genuinely shocked and sad that such young children are sent away from home. These places appear really desirable to those parents desperate to ensure entry into 'the better public schools' .

How is this different from putting your 7 yr old in care ? IMHOthe only difference is that you pay for it and there are more activities. Surely it's not right to do this to such young children . I really thought that had stopped in the 1960s .!

I taught at a residential SEN school/care home and children were placed as young as 7. I think it damaged them more than anything. Rejected twice by society and their parents. One little boy used to come and talk to me whilst I was running the gardening club and told me every time that he was waiting for his grandparents to come and get him and bring him home. It still haunts me years later the sadness of that place and I tried to mother so many of them. But that little scrap standing there in a school blazer that was almost to his knees was heartbreaking. Children deserve so much better than they are sometimes given.

romany You have simply chosen a route for your child that gives her lots of opportunities and a great education, it does not come without risk, but the same can be said for most things. If she is happy and content then you have made the right decision for her. That doesn’t mean to say everyone has a good experience though.

Some of the comments are extreme on here, clearly there are some people that have been very very damaged by their experience, and are understandably upset and angry. It is a very triggering thread if you have suffered a terrible time during your childhood, and the fall out has continued. Others have posted that they have had an amazing time.

As parents we do our best. Boarding schools are divisive, some feeling that it gives a child a polished well rounded education. Others see it as a prison of unloved wealthy children.

It hardly matters what strangers think about your decision, what matters is your dd, and if she is happy and thriving you have made the right decision.

I went from 11. As a mother now I don't know how my mum could do it. It's affected me with self confidence. Outwardly I seem confident in social situations but inside I'm screaming. I worry about people not liking me. I remember the sadness when I was ostracized for things in the dorm and I still can't understand some of the reasons I was. It's a very hard place to be when you aren't in the popular set.

On the drugs question - teen DCs, who through out of school activities know age peers from across a whole rage of local schools, simply commented 'The richer the families the pupils come from, the more expensive the drugs of choice.....'

(This came at the end of a fairly extensive conversation about the drugs of choice and the extent of their use in pretty much all the local schools, state, grammar and independent).

All schools have some drug users. All have many children who don't touch anything at all. The particular worry I would have about boarding schools is that the sheer intensity of peer interactions and the lack of places to 'get away' might lead to some teens getting drawn into 'what their group of friends are doing' in a way those particular individuals might not if they went home every evening - because drug use (legal and illegal) is influenced by locality, peers, school and family circumstances - and while in some cases home can be a risk factor, in others it mitigates the risk.

Boarding school for the children of diplomats or perhaps forces' children at that age, or indeed any age, may be the least worst option, but in general I am not in favour of it.

My late uncle went and to be honest it scarred him for life.

Just a thought for those vehemently insisting that nothing but “family life” will do for 7 year olds. At 7, I was walking home from school alone wondering what my dad would be doing to my mum when I got there and if I would have to get on my big brother’s bike to ride to the police station for help again (such as it was, 1970s, for police think Life on Mars). At 10, she got us away and I had no schooling at all as we camped on friends and relatives floors for 3 months, constantly moving on in case he tracked us down. At 11, my very fine mum finally managed to divorce him, cut all ties with the help of court restraining orders, a prison term and time in a “mental home” as they were called then (for him, not her 😁, though given what she’d been through it could have been either I suppose). She took on our home single handedly with no financial settlement or child maintenance. I haven’t seen him since, thank providence. Then my brother took over and beat the hell out of us until my wonderful stepdad arrived and threw him out when I was 15. Exam results were as you would expect but I found myself in College and did very well.
40 years on and my 2 children have both been day pupils at a boarding school, with occasional sleepovers. I wish to Christ my mum had had the means to put me in a boarding school, which she would have done out of love, not because she was evil.
Possibly an extreme example (or maybe not?) and people have many different but usually valid reasons for their choices. If your children are thriving (and even if they’re not but boarding is the best of imperfect choices), it’s nobody else’s concern, they don’t walk in your shoes.

Yes, Blitheringidiot, it had a huge effect on my confidence, and being sent to Coventry happened to me too once or twice. Typical friendship group problems, but where I would have been able to go home and get away from it, instead I had to share a room with the girls who weren’t speaking to me. Bleak.
It was all something I cheerfully endured , looking back. I wasn’t tearful often, or obviously unhappy, but it is exhausting and stressful never being able to get away. It has left me with a lifelong dislike of groups. I get crabby and overwhelmed if I don’t get any time alone.
I also agree with the pp who said that it taught us to lie. I had never thought about that before! I don’t lie now, but at school it was habitual and i kept up that habit of not telling the truth about my feelings for years after leaving school.
I have no desire to make any parent feel awful, we all do the best we can and make choices that we think are good for our children, but i do say that boarding school changes children, and that damage done may not be obvious for decades. I can sometimes tell that someone I meet was also a boarder.
I can also see that weekly and especially flexi boarding are different.

My best friend is Zimbabwean and board from 5! She is very independent and loved it.and doesnt have a bad word to say. I can't think of anything worse for my child

@Springwalk - apologies for the delayed response, start of half term craziness got in the way! I'm in Sussex - so have been looking at senior schools across the SE (Marlborough/Cheltenham Ladies as far west as we looked, Wycombe Abbey as far north). With a couple of notable exceptions, they all empty out at weekends, and only the foreign students are left.

The notable exceptions were a small number of really big names with very high academic standards, and those with large numbers of overseas boarders - where they still rigidly enforce full boarding. All the rest were flexible about pupils going home at the weekend, even when they claimed to be full boarding, confirmed by the emptying of the schools that you could see happening around lunchtime/after matches on the Saturday's that we visited on.

Flexi seems to be mainly prep, I didn't come across more than a couple of senior schools that were properly flexi.

They are emptying out as it is half term! Marlborough and the Ladies College are full boarding termly only boss no going home at weekends.
Cheltenham has option of day girls, Marlborough is boarding only ( no day pupils at all bar two pupils that live a few minutes away)
Proper boarding schools.
That is what the thread is about.

boss I would also add that the emptying out was probably children going to matches. Or out for the afrernoon if you were visiting during term time.
Proper boarding schools in the main have termly boarding, a few have flexi. I hope flexi and weekly boarding takes off, it seems to offer the best of both worlds. This will never happen whilst the schools are so dependent on international students.

No, they empty out every Saturday, and the children go home. I have plenty of friends with children at supposed full boarding schools, and they are all home almost every weekend. And I can assure you that even in my day (I was a full boarder) many schools allowed that.

Yes Marlborough and Cheltenham were properly full boarding - they are two of the schools I was referring to. Although Marlborough has at least one pupil I know of through personal acquaintance who comes home every weekend to compete in a sport at a fairly high level, so even they make exceptions under some circumstances. Sherborne Girls was also properly full boarding. Every other school we saw offered the option of coming home at weekends, either as standard or with permission - even Charterhouse is going to weekly boarding.

The thread is about boarding in general and not seeing your child for weeks at a time. It's not unfair to point out that full boarding isn't the experience of many boarders.

What actually happened was 2 years later the DD told her parents she wanted to remain as a boarder.

If parents have moved home since child started board, then boarding school, however shit, is their home. A house they've never seen before in a town where they know no-one but their parents isn't home.

I was full boarding. Home for an exeat after 4 weeks (fri evening to Sunday afternoon). Then half term was Wednesday evening to Sunday afternoon. Then another exeat. One phone call a week. If missed your a allotted time because someone took longer it was tough. Letters home were read before sealing. 1980s was a bad time for full boarding. Things have got better.

I’m seriously considering boarding for DS from Y9 (so age 13), but there is no way I’d have sent him to boarding school aged 7.

I’m not sure whether we’ll go for full boarding or weekly boarding. Given that Saturday morning is normal lessons and Saturday afternoon is sports matches, we’ll not see him much either way.

He’s keen to board, and I think the structure will be good for him. He’s already a day boy at the feeder prep, so I think he’ll adapt fairly well.

The school does have a handful of boarders in the prep school (weekly boarding from age 7, full boarding from age 8).

No way would my DS13 be going. It was fun at times but I missed my parents and the family life. In the last year I managed to go as a day girl and it was fantastic. They lived local and thought as they both ran a business I would have more things to do as a boarder.

I would count down the days til I could go home for a weekend.

Suppose at least now they can have phones and can email parents. It was bleak 35 years ago.

Ex was at boarding school from 5, apparently. It was a damaging start to life.

Actually, Jen, you make a good point, a lot of the young full boarders will be choristers at music schools or cathedral schools. Both the choristers I know (one at St Paul's, one at Ely) had to board from about Y4.

And for the record, both are incredibly happy and well adjusted young boys, who hugely value the opportunity to excel in their talent.

"Having spent half an hour consoling an upset boarding student and making a point of daily checking in with another student who has lost a parent this week I disagree with this."
While I'm pleased that child has you, assuming they do have another parent, I am horrified they haven't stepped up. If you aren't there for your child when they suffer a huge loss, what is the point?

No drugs at my school
But that is where i learned to smoke and have only just given up after 31 years.

LonelyandTiredAndLow

"Plus there's always a niggle that I don't really know what I'm doing, not having been "raised" as it were within a family."

That is exactly my feelings too. I have no idea about normal teen years at home and am always wondering is this right. Am I too strict with bedtime. Am I too invested in him. I think as my parents didn't care about my schoolwork then I've gone too far the other way

BlitheringIdiots I think that might be true of all parents of teens - being a teenager is so dramatically different now vs when I was a teen (am an older parent so was a teen a very long time ago!) that I think it's really hard to know what's right.

Maybe that's just parenting overall!

Maybe but it's totally alien to me that a child wants to go out after school
And just wander around