Boarding school

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I genuinely did not still think boarding school existed for little children anymore. Teenagers yes. But I looked up Prince Harry's old school after starting the book, and it takes boys from age 8.

AIBU to think that unless there are extenuating circumstances, sending your 8 year old away to board, with them coming home every two weeks for the weekend, is cruel? With everything we know about attachment and young children now, I just can't fathom it.

My ds does this, every time I need to travel. It works really well. DS likes to spend evenings with his friends, I get a break and can maintain my career. Since being a single mum, the school boarding team have been a truly reliable backup and I wouldn't have managed without them.

If I get stuck behind a motorway pileup or whatever, I just ring the school, he goes to the boarding house for his tea, and I can collect whenever.

It's good for the regular boarders too because they get more variety of company. For working mums with teens, it is a Godsend 😊

@MintJulia I am right there with you.

What I've learnt from being a single mum is everyone has got a bloody opinion on our lives.

Private/flexi boarding has been brilliant for both me and DD13

Why are people making this about single mums?

The thread is about sending children away to boarding school. I don't have an opinion on single parents, just parents who choose to send their kids away from them, so they can do a job they choose instead.

Because in your opinion there is no reason ever to use boarding in any shape or form.

There are many reasons why people do board their kids and some of these reasons are because of being a lone parent.

HTH

If you think that’s bad I know someone who moved herself and her husband to Australia (they are a surgeon and an anaesthetist and both had very highly paid jobs offered to them in a hospital there) and took their younger child with them but left their school age child in a UK boarding school! Their argument was they didn’t want him to leave the UK education system as they didn’t feel the Australian was as good as an equivalent and they planned to come back eventually. So they only saw him in school holidays - and only the longer ones at that. The shorter ones he stayed with relatives in the UK.

You have a child. Change the industry you’re in. It’s always a choice.

Yes, I judge things that damage children.

I loved my parents and vice versa and I also loved boarding school. I started aged 11 though.. Very different from 8. It does suit some children.
Sometimes I smell a particular something, eg soap or flower. And think oh that's really nice then realise that it's because it reminds me of school.

Hmmm, what's that? Oh, sterilised milk and Stork margarine! 😅

Flexi-boarding at 13 doesn’t damage children! How ridiculous. At dd’s school the flexi boarding places are incredibly popular - with the kids. Dd doesn’t do it because I missed the deadline for the form and she’s pretty cross with me about it. Now she has to join the waiting list behind all the others who wanted to do it but didn’t get a place. I’m quite glad in a way because it’s expensive!

They love it because it’s like a sleepover a couple of nights a week. They get to do their homework together, chat over tea, and play table football or whatever in their common room. Each house also has a dog. They have a blast, and if they don’t fancy it for whatever reason, they go home instead.

Not at all the same thing as sending primary aged kids off to board full time.

@jeaux90 I’m sure your daughter will be very happy with your arrangement. Don’t take the criticism on here to heart.

Flexi-boarding aged 13, when you've been at the school for a while and have friends, is a different thing altogether from full boarding at 8, or 11, when you don't know anyone yet. I think the former is great; the latter, no.

There are many reasons why people do board their kids and some of these reasons are because of being a lone parent.

Doesn't that still boil down to choosing a preffered job though?

I am quite uncomfortable with the direction this thread is going in particularly with regard to @jeaux90. I personally wouldn’t send my child to boarding school unless it was unavoidable for the reasons detailed at length on this thread. I am lucky I haven’t had to.

I also think there is some validity to the Boarding School Syndrome idea: I have known people who boarded from a young age and there is an emotional detachment which I find unsettling.

But as a single parent it’s uncanny and unsettling how much of the rhetoric here is painfully close to the fairly moronic stuff you get on the SAHM vs WOHM threads, ie “why bother having kids if you don’t want to raise them.

Frankly a scenario such as the one @jeaux90 uses, ie flexi boarding, would have made my life a hell of a lot easier and would have allowed me to advance a lot further in my career.

Theres a vast difference between this and packing children off for an entire term. Life can be relentlessly hard for single parents (and some in families).

Wanting to provide better for your children and facilitating your ability to work harder when you have no family support is not inconsistent with being a good parent. I don’t see why allowing a child to stay in a safe setting a couple of nights a week to facilitate that is fundamentally different from allowing them to stay with a close family member such as a grandparent.

@jeaux90 is doing the best she can for her child.

And some of us who are generally anti boarding have expressed sympathy and support for her situation

@Hoppinggreen

Some have, yes but the boarding school topic seems to have given air cover to some of the people who talk about evil working mums who “farm out” their children without considering the mitigating circumstances.

I find it distasteful and a bit triggering.

I'm actually quite surprised that the government is not enthusiastic about boarding schools, both independent and state and promotingthem. With both parents needing to work having DC in schools longer means more work time, available for longer hours. On the treadmill of the life of work.
Small DC are in 'wrap around care' as fairly standard and fully accepted as normal from babyhood. Boarding is just a further step.

Can I just add this into the mix.

Some children need a particular type of education that is only available at boarding schools. I'm thinking about Deaf children but there are specialist schools for children with various needs whether that is a disability or something like anorexia.

‘Why are people making this about single mums?

The thread is about sending children away to boarding school. I don't have an opinion on single parents, just parents who choose to send their kids away from them, so they can do a job they choose instead.
Because in your opinion there is no reason ever to use boarding in any shape or form.’

except you aren’t boarding your kid in the sense that everyone understands it, are you?

a child living at home and occasionally boarding 2 nights a week is t that different from a child who is staying at another parents a couple of nights or going to granny’s 2 nights to get looked after while you’re away.
So wind your neck in and stop detailing the main chat with your outrage.

‘Small DC are in 'wrap around care' as fairly standard and fully accepted as normal from babyhood. Boarding is just a further step.’

interesting take and probably how many people justify it to themselves. Except few parents I know use 8-6pm wrap around care everyday. They’ve all made some kind of compromise where very young kids might have a couple of days like this, but the other days the child is in a shorter club instead, or picked up from school by a parent/ relative/friend a day or two a week.

When kids were small we both went 4 days a week so had 2 to be with kids, one ‘ long’ day, a club day where they were collected at 4pm and a day where a friend got them from school and kept them and we reciprocated for their kid.
it wasn’t easy, it means constant juggling, checking schedules to see who’s doing ineX flexible work etc but most parent finds a way. If they want to.

Ironically the people shunting their kids off to boarding school are often the ones who could afford the best help at home, with a nanny, housekeeper, childminder or similar.

I agree.
I am very anti boarding but there are some cases where it IS the best option for the child.
However, I was a day pupil at a Boarding school and from all the boarders who’s circumstances I knew well probably 2 were better off boarding than being with their families.

@VenusClapTrap @Thepeopleversuswork

Thank you.

I apologise too

my dislike of the idea of boarding school has stepped over into me being petty about any forms of boarding school

It’s tempting though, send your kid away for most of the year, let someone else deal with the activities, homework, teenage hormones and tantrums. Just get them back for holiday.
offload the tedious aspects of parenthood, and it’s all okay because your kid is in onenif the best schools.

This.

Yes and blame it on the fact there is no other job in the universe you can choose, so you simply have to send your kids away.

@jeaux90 don't work and you're a lazy handout taker, work and use flexi boarding so you actually can work, you're a bad parent.. I've lost count of the things I've been judged for.. good thing I don't give a much credence to the opinions of others.. I'd encourage you to do the same.

I've done this alone since she was a toddler and no one knows how hard it is to raise a child and work full time unless they've done it themselves. We single mums do what we have to do. Mine started to flexi board in secondary. She's happy and exceling at school, does her work without prompt from me, wants a career, loves that she can access after school activities and gets to spend time with her friends when she boards. I'm counting that as a parenting success!