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.

I went to boarding school (reluctantly) at 12. It was 40 mins from home by car. I went home for Sunday lunch and had weekends at home every 6 weeks or so. I hated it but adapted because there was no choice really. I excelled academically, musically and in sport. Basically, I cut off from my own feelings in order to fit in and became (unwittingly) a “people pleaser”. A successful career in the City followed university. Then into the media. I have four children and am divorced. My ExH was a narcissist and dismissive avoidant. I am still working through my feelings with a therapist and am in recovery in AA. All my life I was on “automatic”: achieve, achieve, achieve. Boarding school was a huge part of this. I am now estranged from my family bar one member who understands (also in AA). I read a book over the Summer called “Boarding School Syndrome” by Joy Schaverien - I highly recommend reading this before sending a child to boarding school - and the pieces of the puzzle started to fit. Horses for courses perhaps, but I now know that a large piece of my heart was cut out in September 1983 and will never regrow. Every year around this time, I feel sad because even 40+ years on, I associate it with packing for school. My own children attend an excellent comp and are thriving. Two are now at top universities and we are still very close. My children are getting the kind of supportive, “present” parenting I never got (even without their dad who sees them EOW). Boarding school imo kills the soul of the child. There are exceptions, especially if we’re talking about flexi- boarding at sixth form level. But missing those precious pre-teen years and early teen years is time a parent can never get back. I was never close to my parents after that. They put themselves first, full stop. I forgive them of course, but I have zero relationship with them as a result.

By the time my son was 12 he was doing two days a week that were 12 hours long. On other days I was driving him home just as the boarders were heading down to the swimming pool in the sunshine.

Go figure!

Yes, we let him board.

Your poor dad, What a way to treat him.

I find it hard to believe the matrons don't care about the children and it makes me feel they are totally in the wrong job. I don't feel that a matron could ever be a substitute for a parent but I end up caring about the students I teach (especially if they are having any difficulties) and its a day school and they are all 13+. I just can't imagine having pastoral responsibility for younger ones and not caring about them.

You are candid and everyone who is thinking about boarding for their children should read this.

I do not believe there is such a thing as child led boarding unless that child is escaping an abusive home.

Parents convenience. The callous heart makes the case for the child. Not the other way around.

My OH went to boarding school his entire school career (military family).

He reckoned it made him more independent but his life skills are pretty poor which I put down to being in an environment where everything was done for him.

Really sadly agree with this, even if they aren’t ’the’ bully in this instance I.e. the one leading the charge of victimising someone else, they’ll most certainly be part of the bully’s crew or at least be going along with it.

the bully or the bullied as you said .

and from my experience (I’ve also had friends that have worked in private schools) the schools do not really care, they may pay lip service but despite what they claim mental health and bullying are not on their agenda, results and fees are. They are a business after all and it is Darwinian

Things I have observed from having a dh who boarded from 10 and many ex-boarder friends (many friends of dh and their wives) who are mostly lovely people but with definite traits in common

Dh and his brother have HUGE unresolved trauma from boarding - it's the never being able to relax and not show your public face to the world. I think social media is now making this an issue for all children and no one thinks it's great but being in an enviroment where you have to be "on" all the time is very stressful

Ex-boarders are very bad at being in their own company amd have to do everything in a herd. Very hard on individualistic types.

Boarders are snobs. These schools primarily exist so the posh and rich can network. Obviously you have your forces children, your bursary children, but the majority have very very rich parents. They have mixed with other very, very rich people from a very young age and often continue to do so at uni - certain halls of the "posh" unis (Durham, Newcastle, Leeds now) are bordertastic. Then they go into banking etc so they can afford to send their dc to boarding schools. You can say all you like about volunteering etc but most do not have a clue about how the rest fo the world functions. Also true of private day school pupils but to a lesser degree.

They have a mindset that posh private schools are as essential as breathing. I remember one friend saying how she'd frightened another friend's dd who was considering a badly paid career by saying, 'Then you won't be able to send your dc to Wycombe Abbey.'

You do you OP, I'm sure your dc are having a great time and are genuinely happy but you can't compare how they would have got on at day schools.

As for the .. it's 20 minutes away, I see them all the time, this is the weirdest bit of all - my friends with bs dc spend their lives on the motorway to watch their kids' matches etc. Why don't you just have them live at home?

This.

I have no doubt that in the best boarding schools, staff are well-trained and kind, safeguarding is spotless and abuse is very rare. Children may make friends for life, have lots of fun, enjoy opportunities they wouldn't get at home.

However, and this is the absolute crux of it, when you send your child away to school, everybody may well be kind but they miss out on love. Nobody else can love your children for you.Maybe it's not so bad when they are 13+ and have had time to form secure attachments, but separating smaller children from their parents remains, in my view, barbaric, and results in children with emotional problems later in life. They shut down emotionally in order to survive, with lasting consequences for adult life and relationships. I don't know anybody who was sent away as a child for whom that isn't true, whether they recognise it or not.

Gosh, this is really upsetting to read but you have expressed it so well.

Wycombe Abbey! Where that poor girl killed herself over a detention. What kind of care for her?

I wouldn't send mine unless my child wanted to go - they would have to be secondary school aged and even then I would be reluctant.

I think the thing parents who send their kids to boarding school need to understand is that the schools set a lot of store by you being the kind of person who “thrives”. As a kid when you arrive, you understand quickly that if you are any sort of person, you “thrive”, but, you are led to understand, there also inferior people who don’t like it. You are in survival mode so of course you decide you are going to be that successful, approved-of person who “loves it”. When I talk to my boarding school cohorts, telling them I hated it is a real act of radicalism. They won’t go as far as me but they know I’m being authentic, and certainly when we were all younger you could see on their faces that I was doing something they couldn’t.

So you think that your friends whose DCs are at home, don’t have a “360” view of their lives but you do? Just because you know where they are doesn’t mean you know what is going on in their life and how they are feeling all the time just because you’ve spoken to Matron and them over the phone! And it certainly doesn’t mean that your friends don’t.

You’re not wrong about the eating disorders and alcoholic ones as I know a few people from boarding schools who donn no or did have these issues.

We had the chance to send dds to boarding school with 90% fees paid.

DH moves around a lot and it was assumed that I would move with him.

I didn't. I stayed in once place with our daughters now 12 and 14.

I'd rather not see him than them.

"I don't have to wash a sweaty kit"
I can recommend getting your child to put it in the machine and switch it on.

'I now know that a large piece of my heart was cut out in September 1983 and will never regrow' @Paris14eme This is so beautifully put and is utterly devastating.

I was a day pupil at a school which also did boarding. Many of the boarders were happy and thrived there, but plenty weren't. It's an environment which suits some children, and very much doesn't suit others. Mum observation was that the benefits of boarding for the "thrivers" didn't really kick in until the age of around 14 with the exception off those children who were boarding to escape a bad home situation.

At that age, children are starting to value time with peers more and wanting to separate a bit from theirs parents.

I think that in theory I would be happy for a child too board if they initiated the process from around that age onward, but in practice I don't have the budget or desire for that kind of education, and while DS who is a happy go lucky all-rounder would probably be one of the "thrivers", DD definitely wouldn't.

Well I suppose I was there, you know? I knew the parents. I still do. I still know the kids. I holiday with them occasionally. No one appears neglectful or scarred, grown up kids still want to come. And I don’t think my own kids was desperately unhappy, but you’ll have to take my own word on that! As for the foster care comparison…umm, I think that’s kind of a long bow to draw. To say the least!

And not all of them were high flyers, either. That’s a common misconception, though I guess the result is the same. But I guess you could level that accusation of career prioritisation to any parent putting their 3 month old into full time daycare… do you?

Should add exh’s brother boarded and hated it.

He came home at 18 and never left

The whole experience scarred him for life.

Fil and mil never lived in reality if it interfered with their view or pursuits

Both fil and mil went to boarding school

One of the reasons exh and I split was because of lying. When I looked at in-laws and exh I think the lying was part of their coping mechanism because getting upset or upsetting others ate into precious family time so everything was swept under the carpet in the pursuit of “happy times”
Even when the lie had far dire consequences than the truth.

😢

Oh no, are you able to share more about the sexual bullying? Hearing that breaks my heart

I went and will never ever send my children. I wasn’t bullied but I was at a prestigious school where all that mattered was academic success and there were children as young as 5 who saw there parents no more than twice a year. Why the f*k have these kids? In the majority of cases the parents were living the expat life in places like Singapore and could well have afforded Nannies. Heart breaking to see. Most of these kids barely see their parents now and no wonder why. The pressure on some of the foreign students to succeed was so extreme I saw several friends have mental breakdowns and anything less than straight A grades was failure.

This is obviously a complex issue, dependent on the child's age, maturity, home situation, school, level of boarding and many more contributory factors

An anecdote from my own experience as a border from the age of 8 at a single sex Catholic school:

At the age of 15 I was a monitor. I remember punishing a younger child for some minor infraction by making him give me the letters his mother sent him: full of stories of everyday life at home. I read them for the sense of love and security that they gave me, even though that love was not directed at me. He told his mother and she said (he told me) how sad she was for me. It makes me weep even now to remember it - for my invasion of his privacy, for the lack of love in my life and for her understanding, at such distance, for a child she'd never met, for the shame I felt at the time at displaying such weakness and vulnerability

Aside from the very common tales of bullying, and sexual abuse, and of children crying themselves to sleep at night, the damage caused, to this day, to my self-esteem, to my ability to be emotionally open, to have proper honest relationships with people is incalculable.

People who know me see me as confident and polished. But I learnt at school how to hide my true self and project an image; it's almost a form of schizophrenia. I have, in almost every relationship I have had, had a secret life, led for the most part (but not totally) in my head. Because school was relentless; every thing I liked, every thing I disliked, was a weakness to be exploited by other pupils and so had to be hidden. Every success and every failure had to be met with a studied indifference, every fear hidden, every bit of joy or sorrow concealed.

Send my children to boarding school? I would rather chew off my own arm. Both for the damage it might do to them and for the joy that I would miss while they were away and later from their disconnection from me

Others will have had different experiences