yes it was a blanket statement but there wasn’t room for nuance in the title.
There was plenty of room. All it would take is two more little words: "To think boarding schools can be cruel?" There, far less absolute and plenty of nuance options and may have elicited a different response.
I don’t understand how parents attach such weight to the opinions of children.
My children are home educated for primary (where I have taken their opinion into resources used and some of their courses), but I allow my children to pick from secondary (within our budget, so boarding isn't an option).
I give so much weight to their opinion in part because I see a benefit in their making choices and respecting their opinions (and home educating, I see what happens if I continue on with a curriculum they hate) and in part because I wasn't given much options as a child. When it was deemed best for my mother to stay home and my father to travel around, when it was moving around to keep us together, when it was seen as best to live with my grandparents...hell I didn't even get a say in my own hair colour from the age of 4 - 15, I was bleached because my mother thought I looked better that way.
I spent my whole childhood having adults say they knew exactly what was best for my siblings and I (and then we were at fault if it didn't work like magic), and learning not only did my opinion not matter, but that I was powerless and so unworthy of consideration with so much information was being withheld from me in the making of these choices even when we all lived in the same house.
I think it is lazy parenting Being your child’s main carer isn’t martyrdom, surely that’s what you should expect when you have a child?
I grew up in the age of lazy parenting - where children were tossed out to play in the street as early and young as possible and we generally raised each other and ourselves, where you never discussed decisions with children - you just made them and forced them to comply, and even with all that, there were many mother's reliant on "mother's little helpers", alcohol, pot, and other drugs, reliant on the wider community to keep an eye on things because they weren't coping (especially when their husbands worked away for long periods of time) -- and no one talked about "savouring the moment".
We're living the cultural backlash from different reactions to that. It's the whole "They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do..." no matter which options you take, no matter if it goes MN picture perfect or not, we will all fuck up our kids a bit in part because different children even within the same family react differently. There are researchers trying, and some things have clearer impact in others, but on the whole, we can't pick out something like this and say what the end result will be.
Some people who go to boarding school have zero bond with their family as adults, some have a middling sort, and some are close.
Some people who lived with the parents and went to school have zero bond with their family as adults, some have a middling sort, and some are close.
Some people who are home educated have zero bond with their family as adults, some have a middling sort, and some are close.
Even within the same family, with the same situations, you'll get different results - it's really hard to predict. I haven't seen my parents or siblings since 2003. My sister was as a young adult besties with our mother even after years of not seeing her. Both my siblings have had addiction issues and have had them since childhood - I saw my sister drunk at 12, I didn't even try alcohol until I was 30. We can talk about probability, but the idea that boarding automatically leads to people who aren't close to their family ignores there are a wide range of factors involved in that.
17 year olds should be living at home and also living their own lives instead of being a cooped up in school 24/7
At 17, I finished high school with some university credits and immigrated thousands of miles away a couple weeks later. That was me, living my own life -- finally living my own life.