in thinking that if it's generally accepted that the family is usually the best place to raise children....

[gabygirl]

...... (except in cases where there is serious abuse and neglect) when it comes to the care system, why so many people seem to abandon this principle when it comes to the issue of boarding school?

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this issue all morning. Last night I sat up until midnight watching that documentary on channel 4 about the boys who were abused at Caldicott. It stirred up so many sad feelings in me and made me cry. I felt so sorry for those men.

I went to boarding school myself at the age of 11 and although I wasn't sexually abused, I was so starved of intimacy and affection in my relationships for the next 5 years that it really affected my sexuality when I finally became sexually active at 15.

Did anyone else see it? The other thing that was sad about the film was the men's desperation to protect their parents against the knowledge that they'd exposed them to abuse, and in one case turned a blind eye to it even after they knew it had happened.

Scaryteacher - I do have 3 other kids who are teenagers! I do know about GCSE's but exams can be taken any time or skipped. There are many paths to a degree or qualifications not only the school treadmill.

My brothers went to boarding school - partly because the local "good" day school was very bad for bullying. They are positive about the experience and have no problems with relationships with my parents or anyone else.
However FIL won a scholarship to a public school and was almost certainly abused there. No need to generalise, really.

I know that NMC, but I can't home ed much as I'd like to, as I live in Belgium, and the law doesn't allow it. I would not want my ds to skip GCSEs as I think they are important, and if he boards, or stays here with us, he has to do his GCSEs, there is no other option.

I didn't get my degree until I was 20 and did my PGCE at 35, and am only now starting my MA at just before 43, so I know there are other ways; but given he has to be in school here, or will have to be if he goes to board in UK, he may as well do the exams, and get good results.

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Quite, scaryteacher - the stories I remember in the press most recently about teachers being sacked for "inappropriate contact" with pupils were in state day schools.

And choose your school wisely - the school I had didn't have dormitories for people to be made to do anything in. They had bedrooms which looked like a bedroom they might have had at home. There's some scaremongering going on here - maybe it's possible to find a school which has 20 to a room and you have to shower en masse, but then avoid it! The parents I met really loved their children and I don't like the implication that they were all heartless child-abandoners because they left their children in our tender care. Because it was tender care.

Point to ponder - because I did know the girls and their friends very well, and saw them interacting together all the time, it was probably harder for them to bully each other than if they had all been separately going home. If I saw any situations building up, anyone looking a bit woebegone or just a feeling that things were not quite as they should be, I could Have A Word.

At boarding school, lots of very important emotional needs are not met. Children need to be accepted and not on educational performance. Children need to be hugged and kissed.

IMO boarding school is a very sterile enviroment.

Poppy - that rings true - a lot of the people I know who were bullied at day schools, it was on the way home from school/on the bus, which seems in some cases to become a sort of dangerous intermediate zone between home and school because no-one is in authority.

yes so sterile that our borders have weekly outings to ice skating, bowling, cinema. They have monthly dorm parties, are currently having a decorate your dorm competition and recently made a guy for the fireworks,
I know for a fact that they are all hugged kissed and played with. They are treated as a large extended family. They are all involved in each others lives and achievements. The house mother even told me that she lays awake counting off the children to make sure she or her husband know what has gone on with them that day.
Like I said before I would like to go and stay with them.

Yawn - as ever, this is one of those discussions where as Poppy says, it depends on the school, the child, the situation and the reasons.

But I would like to take issue with this idea that if you're at boarding school you're not being brought up as part of a family - family is not just about physical proximity, but about the things we do that bind us together. In my case, letters, cards, phone calls, parcels, visits, unconditional love on tap, and what we did as a family in the holidays. I have very strong family relationships. I wouldn't send DS to a boarding school, but that's because he's 2 . I didn't go till I was 12.

And some well run boarding houses can act as a second family to children and provide a lot of love and support, if you have genuinely caring, committed, talented house staff.

At one comp,I had to walk a lad out to the bus, and stay with him until he got on it, on the basis that the little buggers were less likely to thump him if I was about, and they certainly weren't going to thump me. This was in 2001.

Absolutely! The bus home was a horrible Lord of the Flies free for all in my experience. Whereas my girls would walk down from school for tea and biscuits, telly and a chat. My favourite bit of the day. A lot of the things being said about "boarding" are dreadful over-generalisations.

Chicken - At boarding school, adults are allowed to kiss and cuddle pupils?

Are they also allowed to cuddle up in bed for a bedtime story, when ill, tell them they love them?

Do they also watch mum and dad have a cuddle up on the settee and how they interact?

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nmc - not sure if you were talking to me, but I never meant to imply that HE kids would not have friends - I think HE is wonderful.

But in the circumstances I was describing, for my mother and counsins there were no children around for hundreds of miles, so the only way to be with other children was at boarding school (at least for high school). This was/is in Australia.
School of the air does still exist in Australia but only in certain areas.

However, I think the thread is more about UK boarding schools.

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Gosh, the matrons at my brothers' school definitely used to cuddle the boys.
Not sure if the masters did though

It's interesting, a lot of these discussions seem to come back to the idea that the family, and particularly the parents, are the only place in which children find role models and emotional support. This puts a huge pressure on parents to provide every single aspect of their child's development.

Whereas actually, if you look at the extended family model, where relatives are much more involved in children's upbringing, this results in children learning a much more diverse range of ways in which life can be lived, and a much more diverse range of opinions.

I was sad when DS started nursery because he would learn some things there that I wanted to teach him, but then I realised that actually the relationships he forms with talented, caring nursery staff are almost equally as important to his development as the one he has with me and his father.

In a good boarding school, secure in the love of a strong family unit at home, whether that's mummy and daddy or mummy and mummy or just mummy or just daddy, children can not only be ok but thrive and learn a huge amount from some very talented teachers and carers.

But as ever, done badly it's a horror story. As is a deeply dysfunctional family.

didn't see it, but ime beyond certain famillies its an optin usually taken qwith a reason- chilcare reasons, family mobility reasons etc. its an option for ds1: not because we want to in any way but because we could choose a sen education then

Bloss - No i havent hence the questions.

But from my experience as a parent, i would say that every child needs to know that they are loved for who they are. In a boarding environment with a house mother or whatever they are called is each child, unique or one of many?

Unique, as they are to their teachers as well.

I have a friend whose ds has just done his first term at a well known UK public school. In that time she tells me there has been a death in their family, the ds has broken a bone and he has also gone through the first term blues. She assures me that the pastoral care could not have been better and that everything has been handled with great sensitivity. She can't praise them highly enough.

It all comes back to choosing the right one for your child, one you feel happy and confident with, as well as maintaining close family links.
and yes I have seen the house mother comfort the borders with hugs where needed. In the same was that DS2 teacher gave me a hug the other day. I am pleased that the school as a whole doesn't subscribe to the "don't touch" mentality.
The state school they were at before wouldn't even put a bloody plaster on a scraped knee ffs

in the same way

We always end up with the same arguments being trotted out in favour of boarding school education on these threads. Despite always reading them with interest, I've never been able to depart from what to me seems to be an unassailable truth: children need to be with people who love them. Teachers and ancillary staff may be competent, caring, dedicated, fun=loving etc - but they don't love each individual child unconditionally for him/herself.

Yes, and we always come back to the point that whilst families love their children unconditionally, some have to take the boarding route.

I haven't seen any other threads on this topic, am new to mumsnet - sorry
Just giving my pov based on my experience and values