To ask what boarding school is like

[Thesweetlife]

I went to a ‘normal’ state school and so did all my friends, both when I was a child and now. My life in my childhood/early teen years consisted of going to school, going home, eating tea with my family, watching TV, saw my friends on the weekends etc. It was quite a mundane life but I was very happy in my school days. I guess I wonder what it’s like to go to boarding school. How was your (or your DC’s) life different to that of the normal child/teen? Where you happy at your time at boarding school? Have you been shaped by it in the long run? How did it influence you in the long run? What sort of things went on that someone who went to a day school would be surprised by?

DH went, so did my best friend, and family. Mostly because of military parents rather than being rich. All of them hated it, and I can spot ‘boarding school syndrome’ at a thousand paces.

I suspect the reason it gets heated is that people that have experienced it themselves want to discuss their trauma and parents who now send their children there want to justify it. I’m sure things have changed but not being at home after school each day and being surrounded by school colleagues 24/7 hasn’t.

This. Why bother having children only for them to spend 80% of their time away from you? You’ll get all that when they turn 18. The threads that make me really sad are the ones where the OP is considering letting their 8 year old board ‘because they say they really want to’, and pretending they’re just following the child’s wishes, when we all know a small child cannot consent to something so life changing and it’s basically just an excuse because the parent wants to ship them off somewhere.

🙄

If you were genuinely interested you would have posted this thread on the Boarding School topic under Education.

Or looked through the Senior school threads, or at the very least posted under Education.

But no. You’ve posted where you can anticipate the biggest bun fight …

I was a boarder from age 11, back in the 80s so I think things have probably changed a lot and boarding schools now let you go home every weekend. I went home about once every three weekends. I think in the long run it can be quite damaging for emotional well-being and relationships. You learn to be very resilient and tough and bury your emotions and that can have some disadvantages. But I didn't realise this until later in life.
At the time I was on the whole ok. I was sporty and naughty and reasonably good at making friends. All these things help you survive in boarding school.
Losing your family and home at that age was incredibly painful and difficult and it's all meant to be great because it's FUN and it's for the BEST. So you learn to bury the pain.

And no adult reading or posting on this thread has a contemporary experience of boarding. It is not the same now as when you were a child / teenager.

Some of us currently have children at boarding school, or university age children who have only recently left boarding school. Some people might currently work at a boarding school.

Any other responses are largely irrelevant. But I suspect it’s the irrelevant responses that you’re hoping for.

I would consider sending a dc to BS for school years 11-13 as they're old enough to look after themselves by then but not earlier under any circumstances. I do not trust any matron to look after my dc, they'd grow up without family love in their daily lives, unacceptable IMV. The biggest reason for not trusting any matron or teachers away from scrutinising parents at BS is that I have seen for myself how old fashioned and petty these people can be and I'd hate to expose my dc to this. No way.

no adult reading or posting on this thread has a contemporary experience of boarding. It is not the same now as when you were a child / teenager.

The window dressing might not be the same, but apart from that it is isn’t it? The fact is the kids are cared for by paid staff and not their parents, who are happy with this.

I was at boarding school in the late eighties and early nineties. I have mixed feelings about it. I absolutely hated living in a dorm environment because there was no privacy. The initial euphoria of it being like a giant sleepover with your friends every night erodes quickly.

The reality was you have a tiny space that is yours for an academic year a bed, a few drawers and a notice board! At my school we moved dorms every year as part of character building and getting to know other girls in the house.

Hated the fact that we still had a kind of fagging system (without the physical bullying) when I was there . Lots of younger girls were in awe of girls in the sixth form and became their dogs body for want of a better word.

I enjoyed most lessons and sport , but also hated the fact that the school day was a lot longer than friends in day school. There was very little down after school. It was basically prep, clubs , dinner , bed and lights out on repeat.

I telephoned my parents once a week and always made out I was having a fab time to them and saw them at the end of each term and for leave away (home weekends) for seven years!

Modern day boarding would appear to be a lot better on the pastoral side of things.

@watchfulwishes
i completely agree with you. Boarding school is a huge gamble at the end of the day, you are sending your child to essentially be raised by their peers, and into a situation where with the best will in the world the adults there to supervise them will not be able to control what goes on- that set of circumstances can have hugely varied outcomes. I had a far wilder, riskier and worrying set of experiences in my teens than friends of mine who grew up at home- and I was stuck in the middle of rural England. I’ve come away with 3 unbreakable friendships, and some hair raising stories. I would never have sent my own kids.

I can’t say how I would be if I hadn’t gone of course , but I know in relationships I have quite a cynical closed down centre. I am happy with my DH and we have been together a long time - but I know he senses that I am not completely available to him. To thrive away from home you have to very quickly shut down your reliance on the emotional support of your parents. Your peers may or may not be a reasonable substitute in some situations and are likely full of hugely wrong advice in others. I think about it far more now I am the mother of teenagers- all those small calm supportive conversations you can have day in day out as they navigate friendships, puberty, times of academic stress. The privacy they get from being able to come home to their own space. I love my parents and they would be there for me practically in a crisis - but I wouldn’t phone them if I was upset. I hugely value that my children would.

My experience is that people sending their kids to boarding school who have not gone themselves are very reluctant to really think about what they are doing. Of course children at boarding school can enjoy themselves it doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.

So the children do not matter.

I worked for a small time at a boarding school as pastoral staff. The staff do care but they do not love your children. It is institutional care.
Being honest it was worse than I had anticipated. I worked with teenagers and I was anticipating it being fairly okay by that age. It really was not.
Amongst the girls I worked with lots of anorexia, bulimia and disordered eating. Too many parents who did not seem to give a toss, and their kids knew.

And the kids bond with each other instead. That is why they often do not go home during school holidays and instead go away to a friends. The parental ties become weaker and the ones with friends become stronger. They do as someone else said kind of bring each other up.

In terms of zoom and phone calls they increase contact. But surely lockdown taught us that zoom is very different from face to face.

Imagine your school built a hotel/dorm on the side of the school your kids already go to. Would you send then there to be looked after by paid staff who run afterschool activities? That is basically boarding school.

Try reading the thread, dear. Much may have changed but much hasn’t. Not least having no escape, no privacy and no ability to have a casual face to face chat with your parents.

“To thrive away from home you have to very quickly shut down your reliance on the emotional support of your parents. Your peers may or may not be a reasonable substitute in some situations and are likely full of hugely wrong advice in others. I think about it far more now I am the mother of teenagers- all those small calm supportive conversations you can have day in day out as they navigate friendships, puberty, times of academic stress. The privacy they get from being able to come home to their own space. I love my parents and they would be there for me practically in a crisis - but I wouldn’t phone them if I was upset. I hugely value that my children would.

My experience is that people sending their kids to boarding school who have not gone themselves are very reluctant to really think about what they are doing.”

@Cathpot thank you for posting this - really resonates.

no escape, no privacy and no ability to have a casual face to face chat with your parents.

None of those things pertained for the recent boarder in my family. I’m not sure how you’re going to argue that our experience is less relevant than someone else’s?

Some people love boarding schools some hate them.

I come from a long line of boarders as it's a family thing. But my mum refused to send me/my siblings to boarding school because she hated it, as did all of the previous generations before her (not that they were listened to at that age) and she was right I would have hated being away.

Again I have felt the pressure to send my Dc away to boarding school but luckily I'm part of a blended family so I have been able to say actually it wouldn't be fair to all the children and i would prefer them to go to state school like my DSC and be fair with resources across the children and I want the siblings to spend time together ect.

It's a cop out, I know my Dc would hate being away from us for that long. But it's the only way I have been able to escape the family disapproval (not from my mother obviously). It's been said I have got these silly notions from my mother (aka family black sheep)

Before anyone asks yes - I have visited the stately homes thread. For the reasons most people can assume.

I'm your children are home birds - boarding isn't in my opinion great. That said it's really dependent on the child.

I have a son with quite severe SEN. It's really hard to find schools with occupational therapy and speech and language therapy on site so boarding is an option. It would be to board to get direct therapy, not to pass gcses. So it does happen. However it would be my last resort simply as I had kids to watch them grow up. He needs strong bonds with his siblings imo.

Imagine a really crap Hogwarts with good tuition. That is all I have to say about that.

I went to boarding school from 11-16.

The one I went to was run on a shoestring, and there were a lot of forces children and children from local authority in London with behavourial issues, although there were also children like me whose parents paid (mainly farmers & publicans ).

I attended late 70s early 80s.

There was absolutely no comfort whatsoever and contact with parents was mainly by mail (my mother was abroad and my father had a business to run).

The headmaster was a paedophile. The girls were mainly left alone but a fair amount of the boys were interfered with. He was eventually found guilty and the school finally closed in the late 90s and turned into luxury houses.

I can't give out too much information to protect identities but I am still friends with some of the boys (now men) today who were abused and the lasting effect it has had on their lives is heartbreaking.

Boarding schools today are completely different to my experience. I haven't sent any of mine to board as I have never needed to. In my opinion you should only send your child to board if you are abroad or have careers which make it difficult to do the daily school activities. Other people obviously have different views but I enjoy chatting to them after their day and helping them through the school journey. I never had any of that and it was a struggle.

@Mumsafan can I just say I'm sorry you experienced this. And I'm so sorry for the men that suffered at the hands of this ❤️

It is not the same now as when you were a child / teenager.

That may be the case but it stands that when a child is sent away to board, all of their primary relationships are broken. They lose all the links that had held together their lives - their parents, siblings, friends, toys, pets, their bedroom - all gone, just like that. When you go to boarding school you can no longer be the 'home' you and have to instantly turn yourself into someone else in order to survive the shattering of your former life. It's called a Strategic Survival Personality.

I was sent at 10, in the early 1970s, to a strict and austere place where there was never enough to eat and the winters were long and cold. We spent our entire time in herds, being moved in groups from one place to another, always closely supervised. There was absolutely no privacy and no love. No one ever asked 'How was your day?', there were no hand holds and certainly no hugs, ever, and as busy as our herders tried to keep us, we were lonely, homesick children who just wanted to go home.

I despair of MN sometimes …

I went in the early 80s. So my last year of junior school until my final year of senior. I had a fairly fractured early years so I wasn't that phased by it - my DF and DStepM asked me and I said I wanted to go.
The first year of boarding was bad. The housemistresses were pretty nasty. I don't think my parents believed how bad they were. Sneaky bad. They knew the little things to do in order to belittle and humiliate young children. I was desperate to get to school every day. I did go home once a week on a Sunday. I was ill one week and wasn't allowed home - I remember being pretty devasted when I was told they'd called my dad and told him not to come.
That changed when we moved to secondary as we had the most lovely housemistress who genuinely cared about us.
I would say I was pretty selfish, immature and naïve throughout my teen years. (into my early 20's actually) I don't know how much of this was to do with being away from home. A lot of us had eating disorders and encouraged each other. It was single sex so no everyday experience of boys. If you are having issues with bullying/other kids, then there is no respite if you're boarding together. I chose to leave to go to the local 6th form. My grades suffered, but I had a great time.
I wouldn't choose to send my kids away. If there were circumstances when it would be necessary, then of course I would consider it, but we have them for such a short time. I can't believe my eldest is applying for 6th form. I need to be there - physically there - for them, and they need me.

My DH went to one. When he describes it - it was something awfully victorian, with horrid food, regular beatings, etc. He says his happiest day when he set the toolshed on fire and was expelled.

I agree with this.
I also have a child away at university, we chat over FaceTime multiple times a day but it isn’t the same at all. Better, obviously than the old student days of one telephone call a week, but nothing like having her at home.
However much boarding schools may have changed (I have no experience of a current boarding school so I can’t judge it) , the simple fact is that children still spend their days with people who don’t love them. In my experience you learn to live without that level of security and affection. It can be hard to re-establish the bond when you come home again. I think boarding damaged my relationships with my family in ways I wasn’t aware of until decades later. I only boarded for a year, when I was 11/12. My parents weren’t keen on me boarding and moved close to the school. Yet it still affected me.
I can see that it was very damaging for my friends who were boarders all through school. My friends dc boarded for weekdays only, more recently (they are in their twenties now) and this does seem to have been a bit better.

In my view this is the one scenario in which I can see boarding being, on a balance, better for a a child than not (unless home is dangerous/abusive) - and the only one with the child’s best interests at heart.

I don’t really buy the ‘but I work abroad’ stuff, so just get a new job that means you can live with your kid 🤷🏼‍♀️