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.

Surely as a single parent, if you.can afford boarding school you can afford wraparound care before and after school? Plenty of single parents work full time.

There's no career, no job, no decent reason other than specialised residential care for medical reason that is an excuse for baording your child.

DFriend had a father in a high flying military role, and was boarded. Her DM travelled with the DF, and did all the entertaining and support expected of a senior officers wife, so he could get to the top.

She and her Dsibs have a fraught relationship with the parents, they haven't been able to forgive the DF for choosing a career over their needs, and the DM for choosing the DF over them ( as they see it).

Both parents are famous in their own right, decorated, lauded, MBE type awards, famed for their 'success' but now in semi-retirement have kids who want little to do with them, and keep them at arms length from their own grandchildren.

'Surely as a single parent, if you.can afford boarding school you can afford wraparound care before and after school? Plenty of single parents work full time.'

Yeah, I'm not buying this. I know SO many single parents in good professional careers who have their children at home. And as the kids are older 10/11+ they're so much more independent anyway.

@OoooohMatron no I have to travel for work overseas. Sometimes two nights, sometimes a week.

Wrap around care doesn't cut it.

Flexi boarding is what it says, flexible, and is also cheaper than the costs of additional care.

Some people on this thread are card carrying idiots. They have no idea about other people's lives or the decisions they have to make.

What is the point of having children if you aren't planning on raising them?

I would harshly judge anyone sending their young child to boarding school.

You don’t have to travel for work, that’s a choice you make. And you choose to leave your child. My partner travelled a lot for work but when we decided to have children, he changed that. A choice he made because he wanted to actually raise our children.

@OoooohMatron no I have to travel for work overseas. Sometimes two nights, sometimes a week.
Wrap around care doesn't cut it.
Flexi boarding is what it says, flexible, and is also cheaper than the costs of additional care.'

Boarding your kid occasionally a couple of nights a week is NOT the same a traditional boarding and you know it. So no point on getting all defensive about it.

I was at a client dinner - senior woman - and we started chatting about family etc and she said her son had just started boarding, his decision. She started talking about how great it is, what a relief it is - because both her and her DH's routines ( he was also senior in finance) meant getting 6am trains to work and getting home around 8/9pm everyday. Now they were probably bother earning close to half a million quid in pay, bonuses and shares etc so demanding jobs.

The kid was 13 and a day pupil. A driver would pick him up from school, and they had a housekeeper who would have dinner ready for him when he got in then she would leave by about 5pm. He played school rugby so the driver would take the kids on a Saturday to school games, as they often worked again or went to the gym etc
As she went on it became apparent that the poor little fucker was at home alone all week long, or with staff, and didn't see much of his parents. Of course he chose to board given the option. Me and my colleagues discussed on the way home whether we would ever do that - the answer was no, we would change our jobs, hours or whatever it took to actually raise our child.

It was bizarre to me that you would have one child, only one because of your careers, then ignore it in favour of those careers, then send him away. What's the point?

Oh the usual boarding school bashing thread.

I went when I was nine. My brother went at seven.

In some cases it is necessary but in many cases kids want to do it.

My son was a day boy but over the course of his time at school he boarded for a total of few weeks because he wanted to and he had a great time.

Someone in my dorm lived within walking distance of the school but just loved the experience of living in so was a weekly boarder and went home at weekends. It does make you independent and resilient. I was a terribly shy, quiet, withdrawn child and that really ended when i went to boarding school. I can see why so many of today's helicopter parents would find the idea anathema and think it cruelty but kids are incredibly adaptable.

Some kids do hate it. Its like everything in life, different strokes for different folks. Kids have their own personalities, most will take to boarding, some certainty won't.

If the idea is so upsetting to you, just don't send your own kids. However don't judge others, boarding school can be an incredibly rich life experience and ideal for some families for whatever reason.

'I can see why so many of today's helicopter parents'

Raising your own child isn't ' helicopter parenting' and I'm sure you're a lovely, well adjusted person but to most people sending children aged 7 and 9 away from home to live in an institution is child abuse, at best neglect.

Out of interest - why DID your parents need to send you away so young?

People who’s kids live at home with them aren’t “Helicopter parents”

I find the term ‘helicopter parenting’ really bizarre too. What does it mean, exactly?

I work full time in a demanding role, as does DH but the world has changed now. Most people in these senior roles are of the age where they have children and most (appreciate not all) have a degree of flexibility.

I’ll be the first to admit that the hours between 8pm and bedtime are very sacred to me but I enjoy this time because my children are safe upstairs in their beds. I sometimes wonder if my Mum felt any guilt thinking of me asleep in a dorm that she actually never saw. This is a big one for me - parents never came into the dorms. To think that my daughters could be sleeping somewhere I could not picture in my mind is so strange to me.

Perhaps I am a helicopter parent - I’m not wild about sleepovers and there are only 2 families I will allow my daughter to stay at. I shudder at the thought of boarding school for them. I could write a list as long as my arm of the downright criminal things that happened at my boarding school in the 90’s and the ‘tamer’ comments from teachers and staff such as “you’re developing into a woman, aren’t you?”.

Sorry I wasn't having a go. What you've described sounds perfect in your circumstances.

I’m a single parent I know I have not progressed in my career as I could have if I were able to work longer hours/commit to studying further because I’m a single parent

I made the choice to have a child and I manage to work as well as do many

I am the parent who went PT because DW travelled and had the 'big' job. Could we have afforded a nanny, wrap around care, or even boarding so that we both could have that big career?

Yes. But it wasn't even a consideration. Having your children at home, looking after them yourself, for the most part, doing the boring stuff like the playdates and the running to and activities, reading to them, helping with homework isn't ' helicopter' anything. It's just parenting.

And anyone saying that boarding school makes a child 'independent' needs to give there head a good wobble - children 7/8/9 even 11/12/13 aren't suppose to be 'independent'. They're supposed to be part of a family that guides them towards an independent adulthood... not chucks them out to learn how to mask their emotions, and get on with it, as a child.

It’s awful and it messes people up. I know two people who were at a boarding school, one from age 12 plus other idk what age they started, but both had awful experiences and neither would ever send their own kids to one. I very didn’t have children just to send them away for the majority of the year.

*certainly not very

I have a friend whose two sons went at 8. Came home every weekend for the first year and now every other weekend. They seem completely happy. I've known them both since birth and neither seems phased by it. They get very long holidays too. One parent is a farmer, the other in the military.

I have a ds, same age who did normal state primary, has been an independent day pupil since 11 and now wants to board at 14. His choice. I can't afford it but he spends a few nights per term in the boarding house. I think he's at that age, his mates are more important.

Every child, every family is different. I wouldn't have chosen that route because I'd have missed ds too much, but experiences differ.

I went to boarding school age 9 - AMA!

That sounds suspiciously like certain politicians! Thick skinned, over confident, avoidant

@tsunami tsunami · Yesterday 04:31
I know there are plenty of apologists but there’s now also plenty of research that shows boarding young children messes them up psychologically for life, aka ‘Boarding School Syndrome’: see Nick Duffell, Joy Schaverien, Alex Renton & others. Kind of obvious, really: have kids, dump them. It’s a very English phenomenon (designed to produce tough leaders to run an Empire) and lots of non-Brits view it with puzzlement. My college (at university) was chock-full of public school boarder-orphans and though I’d still count a few among my pals in general my own experience is that they frequently display signs of arrested/dysfunctional development: are often socially confident (to the point of thick-skinned) but acutely competitive (to the point of neurosis) yet underneath it anxious, often dishonest or avoidant, unable to form healthy attachments and have no/weak boundaries - actually (sorry to any early boarders on here) I know no ‘normal’ ex-boarders. They’re a car-crash, bless ‘em. That said, usually they’d consider that a compliment'

absolutely agree! I'm surrounded by ex-boarders - my industry and home counties region mean there's a high% of them in my company, and I know some of them very well.
Their social confidence is astonishing. but often makes them really unlikeable - until you get to now them, but that can take years given how high their walls are.
Many defend their parents choices, until they have a few gins/whiskies in them then it all come out.

@NeonEyes right ok so you had a partner that changed his career so he could stay home. That's nice.

I'm a single parent who doesn't have a choice it's part of every job in my industry to travel a bit as and when required.

My DD13 boards two nights a week and occasionally a whole week for that reason. She loves it and it works for the dynamics in our life but obviously it's still wrong according to your judgy pants.

It's fine, life would be dull without different opinions I guess.

Putting your career before your children to the point you choose to send them away, is unspeakably selfish.

Shameful.

And berating a single patent for trying to provide for her children isn't shameful?

DH works away. We live 5hrs away. He is still a very involved parent. He was the only parent to volunteer for the rugby club committee for example.
Being physically present doesn't always mean involved...

We chose this living arrangement over boarding school incidentally and still get stick for not being a proper family!

The 'your' was generic, I just happened to cross posts.

But no, I don't believe it is shameful to point out that anyone choosing a job over their child, to the point they send them away is shameful.

They're an adult, it's what they've chosen and if they don't like my opinion on it, I don't care.

I'm not putting my career before my child. I am balancing out the needs as a single parent to work and sometimes travel alongside my DD13's need for stability.

Her boarding two nights a week is stable, it's a lovely environment. She likes routine being ND and very clever. The fact she is ND is the reason she is in a private school where she is flourishing.

I often feel sorry for people who have a specific, strident view on things like this, I do consider their empathy levels and also the lessons they are teaching their kids.

People are different, maybe consider that.