To ask you, if you despise boarding school, what exactly you think goes on there?

[RainyDaysAndMondaysNeverGetMeDown]

As the title says, if you are one of the many anti-boarding school parents on here, what exactly do you think happens to children at boarding school?

And yes, I am a parent of boarders, having sworn I'd never be.
But having seen how my DCs have thrived (in a school 20 minutes away!) I'm curious to see how much of the perception is reality.

My parents both boarded at known schools and basically hated it. They went at 8 and have told me some awful stories.

I knew a few therapists who specialise in people who went to boarding school.

I think kids and teens need parental input including their love and company more than a boarding school would allow....even if they do come home for weekends.

But don't you think it's sad that those children were in a situation where they were begging to go to boarding school? That their lives with their parents weren't happy enough to want to stay with them. That their parents prioritised their careers and being an "expat" over providing a stable life for their children where they didn't beg to be sent away? Would you nod along if neglectful parents said “my kids were begging to go into foster care and now they’re thriving!”? Or would you still consider them terrible people for creating a situation where the kids preferred to be sent into care?

The neglect is parents putting things (in this case their careers/living as expats) above their children's wellbeing. You're talking as if having a high powered career and being an expat is an unavoidable or reasonable reason to leave your children in the care of others. It's not, it's a choice the parents are making without prioritising their children. The point anti-boarding school people are making is that THAT is the neglect- prioritising those things over raising your children. They shouldn’t have had children if they weren’t willing to put their basic needs (a stable home life) first.

I watched my cousins children go at seven.

one loved it. One cried every time he had to go back. He was miserable and wanted to be at home. He didn’t get great results and his relationship with his parents now he is an adult is in tatters.

Good enough reason for me not to risk it.

A lot of people are affected by knowing adults who boarded and who have mh problems as a result. I know two men who boarded who have had full breakdowns requiring hospitalisation- both of them say it related to boarding experiences. Another two brothers from a military family who boarded from 7 who are both alcoholics, and one husband of a friend who almost never speaks who boarded from an early age. My friend tells me he has significant trauma from school although he is very successful professionally and I assume he does speak to clients.

i would be surprised if the school I work in produces such damage but as I posted earlier we only take Y9 upwards and the teachers and house parents do genuinely care about the students. I wouldn't let my own dc board until 6th form

I didn’t go to boarding school and don’t have anything against it

dh did and he had such a bad experience that even after nearly 34 years of marriage he hasn’t told me the details, thats not to say there weren’t good times but our only argument as a couple has been the hypothetical ‘would we send the children to boarding school’

it also damaged his relationships with his brother and parents

i do have friends whose children went to boarding school recently and they seemed to enjoy it and

My mum went and hated it. I honestly think it affected her ability to open up emotionally.

I worked as an assistant housemistress (pastoral care in one of the school boarding houses) for a year. It was eye-opening having gone to a comp. Generally the girls went home at the weekend unless they were international.

"Many people find boarding school absolutely terrible but it is great for my children so their experiences don't matter!"

Once again I am shocked at the lack of empathy exhibited by people on the Internet.

One also notices a disconnect between the experiences of people who went to boarding school (generally bad) and the positive feelings of parents who are currently sending their own children to boarding school. Now maybe it's just that things have got better in the last generation or two. But I can't help but suspect that parents who send their kids away for most of the year might not be in the best position to know how those kids are really finding it (because the emotional connection may not be as strong, the children may not trust them with the full truth, etc etc).

I would ask to the advocates of boarding school, what are the benefits over the same school without boarding? (to everyone concerned)

OP says her DC are thriving, but what is it about boarding school that causes that, rather than being a day pupil at a great school? (I think most boarding schools have day options)

Just about all the families I know, who have DC boarding weekly, or flexible, have a SAHM , so it's not that there is no one at home for them, or that they're working long hours.

I have read so many threads on mumsnet along the lines of "My teenager treats me abominably. Room filthy. Sulky or swearing at me. Cruel to siblings. School reports no problems there." And I think the answer that should be suggested is boarding school. But no one ever suggests it.

This made me chuckle: because I expect there's an awful lot of truth in it.

I find fiction about horrific boarding schools morbidly fascinating: one particularly nasty one is a film from the 1960s simply called "If...", does anyone know it?. And there are Roald Dahl's descriptions of being at boarding school, one of the less nasty things being made to warm a Boazer's (prefect's) outdoor lavatory seat, by sitting on it.

There's a not very well known film called "The Student Prince", about a fictional son of Queen Elizabeth, who's at Cambridge University with a bodyguard, and only there because of who he is, he's nowhere near bright enough. He rants at his bodyguard: "You can leave your job whenever you like, I can't, I spent my whole childhood being shunted from nannies to boarding school. Mother hardly even touched me!"

These days they go for pre-organised weekends home regularly throughout the year. And holidays, obviously

Not necessarily. There’s an international boarding school near my locality, and they advertise regularly for local families to take kids in the holidays who aren’t going home. Poor bloody kids.

8!

poor little soul

Unless you're an abusive or neglectful parent, there is pretty much no circumstances in which boarding is better for a child than coming home to their family every day.

My husband is in the military and we have had stints of time of him being "a weekend dad" as he calls it, working away in the week and only back on the weekends, and it makes us all miserable. It's no life. So the thought of my children doing that...no way.

I agree it's about quality over quantity, but weekends are no time at all. I'm far from being a helicopter parent, I've worked full time since they were pre schoolers and have gone away for work etc, holidayed without them, none of this "couldn't spend a night away" mentality, but boarding school just feels inherently unnatural and wrong to me. And the fact children want to go, just feels sad tbh.

I remember the comedian Marcus Brigstock saying that he understood why people like Boris Johnson are the way they are...."They had their hearts broken when they were 7 years old."

i Had children to be with them, to give them the love and security they need as children.

Our kids were day pupils at a boarding school, 20 min away.
By the time they were 13/14 they were begging to board. We could only afford the flexi boarding which was 2 or 3 nights a week. They chose which nights they’d stay, and got the bus home the other nights. It’s been great for our kids they’ve both got a good group of friends, and I think thats the main draw for them - what teenager wants to hang out with their parents if they can be hanging out with their friends!

Ours had a paedophile history teacher, Mr Coates, who did his noncing in the boarding house. Because it was a private school we got more of everything so there was even a second paedophile, this time the geography teacher Mr Hudson. And my mum paid for this privilege.

I went to one of the top boarding schools in the UK and cannot understand why my parents wanted to get rid of me as that's what it felt like, and still does. Especially since having children of my own.

My parents think they provided the best that they could and I think boarding school was and maybe still is for others, seen as elite, but deep down from my experience and that of my siblings who also went to BS, is it leaves us with trauma.

I'm now an adult in my 30's and still question:
Why did my parents ship me off to BS? Why did they yell at me to stop crying and still send me even though I was clearly distressed?
Why did they send me to summer camps during the holidays?

Personally I think they couldn't cope as parents so threw money at it. Because of these confused feelings as a child my childhood was spent having a very volatile relationship with my parents, always fighting and arguing. I really struggle with these feelings still as an adult and really have to work on my default behavior not being anger, frustration and anxiety.

It was also full of under age drinking and extreme behaviours. I could go on about all the crazy stuff that happened there but I'm sending myself into an anxiety spiral remembering it all, so I'm going to go and give my children a cuddle and now and appreciate them!

I appreciate not everyone's experience on BS is negative but looking at this thread it seems more negative than positive!

OP, you seem to be weirdly defensive at posts that are talking about general views. I think you still regret sending them to board on some level.

I loved it, at the time. My childhood was a series of separations as my father tended to work 2 year contracts and we moved a lot. It gave much needed stability.

In retrospect it made me emotionally closed down, hugely self reliant, and unable to express negative emotions. I haven't cried properly in 14 years (and that was hormones after the birth of my daughter).

It made me feel emotionally separate from my parents. Leaving school meant leaving all the people I had spent 7 years with, which were the longest most stable relationships of my life at the time. With it being boarding school kids came from all over and there wasn't the ability to still see your friends easily. It was quite a grief process.

There were drugs, though I never saw any. There was bullying. There were some terribly unhappy kids. There were sexually abusive teachers, some now in jail.

I have decided not to send my own kids boarding. It's not good for an eleven year old to have to learn total self reliance.

I genuinely can’t understand why it’s still legal to send kids to boarding school at such young ages.

I wouldn’t allow BS till at least mid teenage years, and only then if there were clear evidence the child themselves actively wanted to go.

I wonder if this was the same school as DH.
The trauma experienced there underpinned his breakdown a couple of years ago

I've read about boarding school syndrome.

An ex of mine whom I loved dearly, has been deeply affected but it wasn't HIM that went..it was his father! His father was sent away as a child and then this affected his relationship with his own children..so much so, that it's affected my exes relationships too. He's avoidant and struggles with intimacy and being loved.

I cannot imagine sending away my boy.... especially at a young age..