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.

Well the law says they can’t choose any school at 13…

No idea why you think I’m annoyed.

It's a technique called strawman arguments. The poster can't argue with your points so they make up pretend points and attack those instead. 'You think your teenager is the same as a two year old and you don't let them have opinions' is a much easier argument to shoot down or ridicule than 'You agree with all the available research into child development and parent/child bonds, and you understand that minors can't legally make their own decisions because they're not developmentally ready to yet and therefore need their parents to make those that are in their best interests, which may not necessarily be the ones that they themselves would choose, especially when they're heavily under the influence of a business that is grooming them to choose the best financial option for that business.'

Tell me if your 13 year old wanted to play an instrument seriously or engage in sports training that took a lot of commitment - tennis, gymnastics, athletics, skating etc; or choose a music school, theatre school, dance school, sporty school would you let them?

Your posts make no sense @Mirabai .

Yes, within the boundaries of what I felt was reasonable for their mental health (I think some types of intensive training for kids can be harmful). And as long as it didn't involve living away from home. Actually I think the combination of intensive training and no daily parenting is even worse than 'just' boarding, which I'd never consider either.

if my 12 year old son told me he wanted to live away from me for the majority of the week I’d have to really reflect on where I’ve gone wrong with my parenting for him to not want to be in his own home.

OP, i can’t imagine living 20 mins from my child’s school and not picking him up at the end of the day. All the sporting activities will be accessible to the day pupils not just the boarders, so you could easily pick him up when the school day finishes at 5/6ish. That he doesn’t want to come home just 20 mins away at the end of the day is really sad.

An awful lot of people who go to boarding school seem to have hated it, and have terrible memories of boarding. Including KC (although I accept he's a bit of a special case). If the kids chose it for themselves then fine, but to have it imposed on them by their parent's seems to be emotionally harmful.

It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong - on the contrary it might mean you’ve done something right - that you’ve raised a happy, confident, independent kid who’s comfortable choosing what they’d like to do.

if my 12 year old son told me he wanted to live away from me for the majority of the week I’d have to really reflect on where I’ve gone wrong with my parenting for him to not want to be in his own home.

That's how I see it too. Like when children with divorced parents decide they'd rather live with one parent over the other. It's usually because that one parent meets their needs in a way the other doesn't. Children choosing to live at school over living with their parents are not getting something they need from their parents. In the OP's case, her children chose school so they could have friends and hobbies because their parents do not meet that need by living in the middle of nowhere.

A friend of mine attended boarding school. She actually enjoyed it for the most part. However, she said that one of the worst things was that on the day term started (or the day before), she would inevitably have some sort of argument with her parents. It makes sense psychologically: she was unconsciously trying to create some emotional distance to make the separation easier. But she said it always made her departure hugely upsetting, and then she couldn't experience an ordinary reconciliation because she was miles away. Talking on the phone wasn't the same. It may seem like a minor issue but it got me thinking about the day-to-day ordinary interactions that can't occur when a child is away from home for much of the time. Learning how to apologise and reconnect after an argument would be just one example.

When people say that boarding school is different now, they are right in part. I very much doubt any children today are experiencing the horrors one sees in e.g. George Orwell's brilliant, scathing essay "Such, Such Were the Joys." But as many PPs have pointed out, having mobile phones and decent food, etc. can't really change the essence of boarding school which is children living away from their families for a significant part of their childhood/adolescence.

I also take with a pinch of salt any parent who declares their child is having a wonderful experience at boarding school. I would want to hear directly from the child, preferably when he/she has grown up and can draw conclusions about what it meant from an emotional and psychological perspective to be educated at a boarding school.

When people talk about the ‘independence’ that children gain from boarding school, what does that actually mean? I live up the road from a boarding school and I see groups of young teenage boys walking up to the local shops accompanied by a guy in his early 20s. They go and buy their bags of sweets and crisps, then they all walk back again with their supervisor. At the same age my own children were heading off on public transport with their friends to sporting events, the cinema or the beach with no adult supervision. Which child has more independence? Does independence actually mean not bothering your parents with your problems?

That's very true - children at boarding schools have less independence, in the real sense. They are terribly sheltered and spoonfed. The 'independence' the schools claim to foster is really just 'emotional and physical separation from parents' in a more tasteful package.

Compared to children who live rurally so their parents have to drive them everywhere…

Can’t kids do this at the weekends and holidays? They’re not in prison. How much cinema and beach doing do you do on week days?

@Remaker
ha ha, I can say that my boarder got the bus or train into town from school, however, I was talking to a day pupil mother from a different school who was worried because her 18yr old was taking his first bus trip into town and she was tracking his whereabouts on her phone! Apparently he can't cook either.
Schools are different, children are different, parents are different.

Come on, this isn't really about boarding being beneficial for independence or educational outcome or extra curricular activities or forging lifelong friendships. This is about the loss of day to day parent/child connection, which child development studies have shown to be crucial for good outcomes for the child. All of the aforementioned benefits to boarding can be achieved at a good day school. Aside from additional needs or an unstable home life, I don't understand why anyone would want to take the risk of disrupting this connection?

Many many working parents have kids under 12, so many many working parents get home well before 7 or 8, unless they have a parent at home in which case the child sees their primary parent a lot. I’m saying your statement that many parents don’t get home till 7 or 8 isn’t really true.

They mean independence from parents i.e. they no longer rely emotionally on parents and rely instead on themselves.

I know 2 people very well who went to boarding school in the 50s/60s and they were absolutely changed for life (not in a good way). They both went very young and were traumatised by being raised by an institution rather than a loving family.
Neither were sexually abused luckily, but did both marry very abusive men.

It's considered 'going into care' the silver spoon version by my friends, but maybe there is a place for that for some families in need. I don't really understand why nanny's aren't employed instead of sending children away.

Gosh since I last posted I keep thinking of people I know who boarded and the tally of alcoholics and men who have had breakdowns as a result keeps going up. I know two adults (both women) who seem unharmed by boarding. 8 men with serious problems although two have gone on to have fulfilling lives after hospitalisation for severe mental breakdowns.

Dh and I both work at boarding schools, they are very caring schools. I hope the percentage of our students who are damaged isn't 80% as it is in my adult acquaintance.

As others have mentioned much of this comes down to where you choose to live. I live in a major city. My children commute across the city and back daily to their schools. And on the way home they stop off with mates for food or shopping. Independence is the daily lives, not a fun little activity for the weekends.

My DD also studies for her exams at a library, not watched over and supervised. I will be interested to hear about her experiences at Uni next year. Certainly when I went the boarding school graduates were far more likely to fail than those of us who had learned how to self regulate our partying and studying while living at home.

It really really doesn’t. At 18 perhaps. Not as basically a young tween.

The goal of parenting is not to have 12 year olds living alone. You have a very strange barometer of successful parenting.

I think for older teens part of the problem is that it constricts their development into independent adults. Part of growing up at sixth form age is starting to make your own decisions about what to do with your time and who to do it with. It's a stage of life when social circles expand, a time for parties, going to the beach with your mates after school, gradually making your own life. That's much less possible at boarding school where the older ones are basically young adults living with a bunch of children and obeying more or less the same rules. Plus I'm much happier that my teens learned how to deal with alcohol at home than at school. Older teens need a lot of parenting, sometimes subtle but it's just as essential as it is for little ones.

I have three siblings and we all boarded. We have 10 children between us, none of whom have boarded. None of us considered it for a minute.

@Mirabai This isn’t about you being mature it’s about you being emotionally needy and a bit afraid of life.

Actually this is very telling that the boarding school culture is a very similar experience for almost everyone there. This is exactly the same mentality FIL would ha be due to boarding. Being around family, emotional bonds and parental love at a young age is being emotionally needy.

The key word is “adults”