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.

You’re definitely allowed to feel sad about that!
If I’m not in the same room as her my mum will find me to say good night when I visit now, at 35! And always did it while I lived at home.

Could not agree more.

I asked DD 15 to tuck me up last night as I was feeling overtired and she refused, so I still had to tuck her up in bed. It’s one of life’s nicest things I think.

I don’t think the ‘DC begged me’ argument doesn’t hold much argument. What if they just wanted to go live with someone else and were desperate’ would their parents just let them. ‘I want to live with granny, I’m desperate’ off you go then.

i can see DH would have done extremely well at residential school. He likes constant company and conversation and noise and having his time organised. He doesn’t need quiet downtime like
i would. It’s clear a lot of parents send their children despite what they are like as it’s tradition etc. it’s very sad.

Yup. My 12 year old wants to do all sorts of things I say no to! There's a passed down belief it's somehow superior /good for them as we've seen on this thread at times. Along with "it's the making of them/me" etc. 😔

It's the little things, isn't it? They'd suddenly remember something funny they'd seen or heard and come in the kitchen to tell me, or they'd tell me what happened at school that day, or ask me to test Spanish vocabulary or listen to music they'd discovered. You can tell instantly with teens when that behaviour changes and you begin to unpick any source of stress or unhappiness. I look back on that now and couldn't have broken that bond.

100% Age appropriate choices! Leaving the family home is not!

This obsession with 'independence' is so misguided and contradicts everything we now know about child development. A nurturing and loving family home will build resilience and independence in adulthood.

@pearvines
Sending away, to me implies that the child did not want to go.

DS had the option of a day school, or a boarding school. He choose to board.
For me, having my kids nearby, was more of a thing than them being miles away at school.

Knowing I could get to them in 30mins if necessary, was important to me.
I never felt detached from either child. They called when they wanted, we saw them for weekly stuff like sports or concerts, took them out for tea/lunch/dinner when we wanted to. It really isn't like they are detached from their families. It's just that they happen to sleep at school.

I think you need a strong family bond in the first case for boarding to be successful. Maybe if that's not there, then relationships can go wrong??

I trusted my kids at 13 to tell me if they weren't happy, which at one point DS did, and we sorted the problem out swiftly. We repeatedly told them that they could change schools at any point.

I don't know how else to explain to people that boarding doesn't have to be cruel, nor poor parenting. My kids regard themselves incredibly lucky to have gone to the schools they did.
Yes, I made emotional sacrifices in order to allow my kids to benefit from boarding.

I went. I know. It’s awful

@Manyshelves - I'm sorry. Did you want to go? Why didn't you move to a day school?

If it was an emotional sacrifice for you, can you see it might have an impact on their emotions too? And that maybe with incomplete brain development they wouldn’t understand the impact?

@iamsoshocked children cannot always initiate difficult conversations about stress and well-being. The teenage years are so tricky, parents have to be very aware indeed. You were relying on yours to communicate from a different place and alert you to something you wouldn't have known. I'm glad it got sorted, and I hope your children are thriving, I really do.

@iamsoshocked thank you for explaining, i appreciate you don't have to and it's never nice being outnumbered on a thread and challenged, but what benefit do you think they got from boarding school that outweighed all those small moments you missed? Your 13 year olds didn't know or understand the benefit of home, security, family, bonding, they were enticed by the shiny school, and do you not think that on some level as they mature they will question the willingness of yourselves to let them go? Because if the main benefit is education, and you have the money for boarding so have choices, the compromise is being a day pupil surely?

I boarded from 7, hated juniors and loved seniors. I had a fairly rough hone life and as an only child it was far more fun to be at school doing all of the activities, having multiple things to choose from at every meal, movies to watch and weirdly being made to do prep so I never fell behind academically. I see kids at the comps near us failing, parents don't seem to notice them failing and complain they don't know what's going on as they're always on devices or with friends, so they never see them anyway. Dd is at private and thriving with multiple after-school clubs and a circle of close friends and amazing food every day. I see her every weekend and she actually talks to me for hours, unlike a lot of her peers at state schools around their parents in the week. Some kids just love it. It's not the same now as it was 30 years ago, so anyone talking about their parents or exes over 30 are going back to a time when corporal punishment was allowed! I had friends at state schools who were locked in cupboards and one made to strip naked for cold showers! It used to happen in all schools.

Why come on here to fight windmills OP?
you feel like you have to justify yourself before your immediate circle but don’t want to pick up an argument in real life?

My beef with boarding is cultural. In my culture only orphans live away from home at 13. Your kids your choice though. No different to a full time nanny I suppose if you had to work but more social. Mine are little for now so I like to stroke their button nose when they are asleep and I see 6 hours at school as ‘I don’t get to see my child enough’ already.

‘I don’t think the ‘DC begged me’ argument doesn’t hold much argument.’

weird, I have a huge extended family, kids everywhere, coach a kids sport so come into contact with lots of kids, have many friends with children… none of them have ‘begged’ to be sent to boarding school…
it really does seem to be a specific subset of ( wealthy) people who have these children desperate to leave home at 9 or 11 or 13 to live in institutions

Quite, @Captainmycaptains

I've never met anyone who gives much of a shit about it.

If it makes you feel better to think you're all hated because a lot of us support the Starmer VAT situation then go right ahead.

Doesn't make it true, though.

@RespiceFinemKarma this isn't about failing state schools v private.
This is about sending children away to boarding schools.

If they’re a day student and they want to board why not? In my nephews case it was weekly boarding so home every weekend and school holidays.

As a parent I would miss my DC too much, and would feel it was a complete waste of their already short childhood.

In terms of what goes on, an old boyfriend of mine attended a very prestigious boarding school, and the bullying that went on was awful. Old fashioned stuff I thought belonged in books - fagging of first years by older kids. Horrible.

Why not? For all the many reasons people have already suggested. Day to day interactions with parents and siblings are important.

DC1 was utterly miserable in her day school as all she ever heard from the staff was give up music in favour of academics despite telling them she wanted to go to conservatoire/be a musician. Specialist boarding at 6th form was transformational and i am so guilty for not sending her sooner as what she went through in year 9-11 was truly awful and nothing a supportive parent could do made it any better. So no. being at home isn't always best for a child.

I don’t know if it has been mentioned on this thread before but Charles Spencer was abused by an older girl at his boarding stuff and left him with life long issues.
As others have said childhood is so precious why wouldn’t you want to spend as much of their childhood with them . You will never get that time back and they will spend a life way from the home once they fledge.

I was thinking about boarding schools today as I am about to send my youngest DS to university. I will miss him so much, but he is 18 and it’s natural that he will fly the best. A 13 year old or younger? No way. Just the nights when it’s raining and you ar tucked up in bed knowing everyone in your family is safe and snug listening to the rain…. You miss out on too many moments OP and so does your child.

To be fair, it is going to mainly children who are already at these elite schools (as day pupils) who are going to ask to board because they see it all around them, their friends board and they are already doing long hours in school.

The Senior school that gets the majority of the children at the prep school I work in used to have tiny, tiny numbers of day children. A couple of ours that started there as day pupil become boarders by October half term because they were at school till 9/9:30 at night by the time activities and prep were done and then driving up to an hour home. They were exhausted and wanted to be in the dorms with their friends. Nowadays, it's different. The school has massively expanded its day offering due to parental demand and there are far fewer reasons to be at school so late. There are now lots of day pupils and they go home between 6 and 7pm on a standard evening. If they have to stay late for a rehearsal or a lecture or something, I think they each have a bed in their day house which they can use for a sleepover when needed but I might be wrong about that.

There are lots of parents at our prep school who, even when their child begins Year 8, are clear that it is a day place they want at Senior. But, by the time the places are being offered and the children are talking about which house they're going into and dorm allocations etc, it's amazing how many children talk their parents into taking a boarding place instead. I don't think the children would ask if they weren't constantly exposed to boarding culture though. It's not the same as a child at a day school (private or state) randomly asking to go away to boarding school.