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.

Would want to add, that I know many people who I like and trust, who I think are good, decent people. But I cannot think of anyone who I would want to act as parent to my child, particularly not someone in a paid role (unless perhaps they were foster parents who had received extensive training).

Would also like to flag up that it's not always obvious when children are being damaged by the emotional and social environment in which they are growing up. I have had contact with people I knew at school who have told me they were miserable as sin while they were boarding. You never would have known it at the time. People put on a brave face, and adolescence is a confusing time anyway. Think about those men in that programme last night. Did any of them beg their parents to be allowed to leave after the abuse started? I bet to any observer they would have seemed just as happy and settled as any other child at that school.

When you go to boarding school you are aware that you are part of a supposedly privileged elite. You may well enjoy being away from your parents and spending a lot of time with your peers. That doesn't mean that emotionally it's a healthy environment for you to be growing up in..

just to point out (don't have time to read thread...) if someone hasn't already that - I know this has become a debate on the virtues of boarding school for which I am not an apologist at all - but the majority of abuse happens in families, by people related to or well known to the child...

Families, by default, are not always good for kids even if they might mostly be...

gabygirl on Tue 16-Dec-08 18:46:26

"It may be your 'uninformed opinion' but there is a growing body of evidence, some of it from the the field of neuroscience, that babies thrive best when they have one to one care below the age of 18 months. This evidence is rooted in a new understanding of the way the architecture of babies' brains develops - how their brains are 'hard wired' for life through the interactions they have with their primary carer in infancy. "

Gosh, I didn't realise boarding schools started that young!

"spend vast chunks of time with them in the holidays"

What - two or three weeks at Easter and Christmas and 6 weeks over summer?

Does that count as 'vast chunks of time'?

Bloss - how many children, in addition to your own, do you care for?

Cory, I quoted someone's comments about nurseries and childminders and was responding to that.

but the majority of abuse happens in families, by people related to or well known to the child...

Yes - but that's probably because the vast majority of children don't go to boarding school.

Don't boarding schools have more than 6 weeks in the summer?

Depending on the school, the housemistressing/mastering jobs are very desirable.

At the one I taught at, one of the house parents taught, whilst the other ran the house, or perhaps taught part time. you are provided for the most part with free accommodation, free meals, time off, and no bills to pay, except your phone bill. If you have your own home, you have to pay for that too, but some can live in all year round. You are paid on top of your teaching salary for the pastoral role.

Someone I know earns circa £44k for teaching and housemistressing. That's a desirable salary in teaching by any standards methinks.

Bloss you sound far more capable and trustworthy than any of DH or I's family and far preferable to the state care system.

gaby, I was simply responding to your point that 'families are the best places to raise a child'. Not always.

Most boarding schools have 1 month at Christmas, 1 month at Easter and 2 months in the summer. There are also exeats and half terms.

And most private schools have more holiday than term time time, I believe something daft like 20 weeks a year holiday all in.

Most parents these days don'tl ike boarding and numbers have fallen in the independent sector for obvious reasons. Plenty of my father's psychiatric patients were damaged for life by the rejection that boarding school is. Yes, teenagers are hard to deal with (I've had three go through those stages) but that's not a reason to cast them out. I have spoken to many many children from boarding school. I remember at one well known school asking the boys every Christmas, those on our table, if they would send their chidlren there. Many wouldn't and many talked about - it not having done them harm or they survived it and that's just it - why should you have to have survived something, why shoudl you have to build up a carpace of hardness, learn how to manage without the people who love you, have to bond with friends not your family because your family doesn't want you with them?

Add on the fact that in general most of the top 50 schools for exam results are day nor boarding in the private sector bar a few exceptions and I really can't see the point unless you'd be such a bad parent at home that the damage you'd do to them exceeded the damage done by the rejection of sending them away. Also parents lose influence and chdlren have no escape from peers.

The fact the duvets are nicer and you can call home these days doesn't remove the underlying psychological issue that your parents don't want you around to such an extent they pay to keep you away, a nasty nasty dynamic.

Obviously 13 is better than 7 to be sent away but I do think coming t your own home every night even if it's just to grunt as an adolescent at a parent is better, your refuge, your chance to have an additional area of your life where your peers aren't everything and the ethos of teh school whether that's that everyone smokes, drinks does drugs is not teh onl influence on your life. I have never seen so much smoking as in one boarding schook. Much harder ot be different when you live and sleep with your peers. Much harder to resist influence or escape from the herd mentality.

Xenia on Tue 16-Dec-08 19:14:51

"Add on the fact that in general most of the top 50 schools for exam results are day nor boarding in the private sector bar a few exceptions and I really can't see the point unless you'd be such a bad parent at home that the damage you'd do to them exceeded the damage done by the rejection of sending them away. Also parents lose influence and chdlren have no escape from peers."

But if you're in the forces or a diplomat? Does that necessarily make you a bad parent?

I am thankful I can keep my own children with me and I am sure it is good for all of us, but then I am not in charge of diverting crises in some of the most unstable corners of the world.

'The fact the duvets are nicer and you can call home these days doesn't remove the underlying psychological issue that your parents don't want you around to such an extent they pay to keep you away, a nasty nasty dynamic.'

That's unfair Xenia, especially to those who have to send their kids to board as there is no suitable school wherever they happen to be posted abroad; or it is unsafe to take the children. That's even before you get on to timings of postings not gelling with school years/terms.

What about a colleague of dh's, in the Forces, whose wife died unexpectedly. His two went to board, as he couldn't at that stage leave the RN. They are fine, and he has kept working in the Navy.

I think the emotional killer with boarding schools is that the parents chose to send their children away from them and, in teh case of children who then had a terrible time, the emotional burden rests with the parents who didn't have much of a chance to figure out what was going on.

I'm leaving this thread now as it's making me angry.

gabygirl I'm sorry you had a bad time. And I understand you don't feel you want paid people looking after your child. But I stand by my opinion that some of the people who work in roles caring for children do just that - they CARE for the children very deeply. And to deny that is to malign some very talented and committed people.

I also think that our society has become too focused on the tiny little nuclear family of two parents and the child or children. For children to grow up in with the capacity to form healthy relationships they need not just a secure home and the unconditional love of their parents, but to form relationships with other adults (and peers) as well. These can be teachers in any setting (boarding or day), or nursery carers, or relatives, but they are essential. Doesn't have to be boarding school, but this idea that parents have to provide all the emotional development for their children is wholly ridiculous IMO. So boarding school is not necessarily, in a sweeping way, a bad thing, if it provides an opportunity to form those relationships.

I would also add into the mix that yes, children need to have people who love them. But I'm not convinced that it's strictly necessary for those people to be there physically all the time. A child who knows he or she is loved by their parents and is secure is quite able to be away from those parents successfully.

In the end it comes down to the individual child, family and parents, as well as the quality of the school. No doubt those of us who went to boarding school would be different people if we had gone to a day school, but who knows if we'd be nicer or happier?

I'm pretty nice (I hope), have a fab steady relationship with DP, a good job, a beautiful DS, a fab relationship with my parents, and another DC on the way. I would call myself very happy, and I'm not sure how a different school would have made it any better.

"your parents don't want you around to such an extent they pay to keep you away, a nasty nasty dynamic."
or that your parents care so much for you and your future that they are prepared to do the very best they can for you.
The choices I am faced with for secondary are a local school in special measures or a boarding grammer school. I could move home and uproot the younger ones to be near the grammer but then what would happen if that one didn't suit either of them?
There is no easy right or wrong answer and you do the best you can. Iknow that if I do send DS1 to board I will make it my mission to see that he retains the close family ties that we have now.

WhatFreshMistletoeIsThis on Tue 16-Dec-08 19:29:49
put far more coherently than I could!!

Good point about the nuclear family, WhatFreshMistletoe. I do rather wonder if the obsession with nuclear families as so much 'better' than boarding school is going to be revealed, by the next generation, to have turned potentially-healthy-and-sensible children into snivelling inadequates who can't keep any of their emotions to themselves for a single second. Mind you, we do seem to be breeding a lot of blubberers at the moment (I looked at that X factor clip after reading about it in the paper - the amount of mops they must get through dealing with all the snot and tears!). A tendency to express your emotions unrestrainedly, all over the place, isn't actually that desirable a quality anyway.

"But I cannot think of anyone who I would want to act as parent to my child, particularly not someone in a paid role (unless perhaps they were foster parents who had received extensive training). "

Did you receive extensive training before you became a parent?

"your parents don't want you around to such an extent they pay to keep you away, a nasty nasty dynamic."
Christ my mother still feels guilty about sending us away, but she made what she regarded as the best parenting decision at the time for her family.

Bloss you sounds like a fantastic houseparent, but you are not standard issue. I doubt even in your school if you can say all the houseparents are as good. In addition, you can not mother each and every one those kids however lovely you are as a guardian.

As Gaby says if you had asked me while I was at school to read this thread, I too would have been astonished. Of course I was fine, I had my friends, I had my place in school, I was quite happy taking myself to airports and negotiating long flights alone. I had a huge amount of unsupervised time to get up to what I wanted, my parents had no idea. I mean nooooo idea. As a teenager this is a heady experience and hard to consider giving up. I clashed hugely with my mum aged 16 or so when she tried to intervene in my life over a particular incident. I lived two lives; the school life, and then a very lovely relaxed beach based time out home life, and I switched back and forth 3 times a year. I smoked at school for instance and without effort didnt at home.

I am surprised how uncomfortable thinking about it is making me feel. I keep writing and deleting things. Clearly to put it in a global perspective I had a fabulous childhood and blowing up my own hoop about it now seems ungrateful and in the end serves no purpose.

I suppose overall it has left me with a slightly worrying ability to switch off emotionally. For the first few years I was so homesick at the start of term and then I can remember getting to about 16 and crying as I left home and getting on the aeroplane and feeling nothing, and feeling guilty for feeling nothing. Then again I feel I am probably a much more independent person than I would have otherwise been . Who's to know.

I just think it is wrong to think you can send a child and expect there to be no consequences.

I don't think any of us who have kids at boarding school, or are contemplating it, expect it to be consequence free Cathpot. It's not an easy decision to be making.

However, it may be in ds's best interest to go and it will make him more organised and less tied to my apron string. It will foster some independence and make him take a bit of responsibility.

There may also be less desired outcomes too, and I am aware as a parent and a teacher of what those might be. The less desirable outcomes could just as easily happen at the International day school he attends at present.

Can't stay away.....curse Thread I'm On!

sticksantaupyourchimney - I know what you mean. In some cultures, 13 year old boys are out earning money, working long hours to support the whole family, and yet we're wondering whether our 13 year olds could cope with being without their parents for three months.

I'm not saying either way is ideal, but there's many ways to bring up a child, and my gut feeling is that the things that affect outcomes are rather fewer than we think. Children grow up happy and contented in all sorts of different and varied circumstances, as long as some basic factors are there such as love, support etc.

And while I would never want to send my son to boarding school at the age of 5 or 7, I do think that there comes a time when we all have to recognise that our children have to learn to be independent human beings, and that they simply don't need us quite as much as they did (or as we wish they did ).

Go off and read www.boardingschoolsurvivors.co.uk/extract_1.html

Someone mentinoed above feelings - yes you have to learn to hide your feelings. You develop a hardness. You find in many cases it harder to form close emotional relationships in adulthood. You're all jolly and getting on with people on the outside but inside you're been wrenched asunder because people who tell you they love you then don't want to be with you. They say it's for your own good, to make a man of you or say it didn't do me any harm. But yes it did do you harm inside. It made you learn that people who love you send you away, that they value some external factor like an accent or an exam result above love and cuddles and being together to be able to touch each other and be together on a daily basis.

Children survive boarding school and some are not troubled by it but you cannot know into which category your child will fall and many many a child will say they're happy because they tend to say what their parents want to hear so how can you ever know?

The hardness, the ability to cope is a reaction to the extremity of being sent away. It's not a desirable thing. It's a consequence of the emotional harm. But I would still respect the right of a parent in a free society to do that. i don't class it with hitting children which should be banned and not within what we allow.