How often do you visit your boarding child?

[Layinwait]

Just that really! How often do you visit?

Gosh triggered boarding school mothers are quite a thing.

Oh come on. They’ve been called child abusers on this thread!

Good friends of ours went to boarding school, they hated feeling ‘abandoned’ by their parents. Definitely a raw nerve hit here @sezzer87 . Another troll here upsetting the sisterhood 😂😂😂

The sisterhood would strongly disapprove of boarding, how ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
It is hard to think of a good enough reason to board, possibly severe special needs like harvey, Katie prices son, or if the parents are not capable perhaps, army children.

Oh please! Value on education is clearly not your strong point.

I don't tend to post on these threads but I work in a boarding school.
Firstly Sezza is a goady poster on other threads so I'd just ignore.
We take kids from 7-13 and have Exeat mid term, offer flexi, weekly and full. Some internationals obviously see parents termly but most children in our care are weekly, and we have sports matches for the majority of children on a Wednesday which a relative normally comes to (sometimes it's a grand parent).
The majority of our children chose to board and it is quite common to have one child board while a sibling goes home.
It has changed hugely in the last 10 years when kids were with us completely from term start to term end to this very free flow, book in for an odd night or 3, it's the only way we have managed to keep boarding going when many schools have closed. Parents don't drop their kids and vanish anymore and I would say currently all our uk resident children see parents anywhere from 2 - 5 days a week!

you can have an excellent education at day school.

boarding school is a very personal choice. Some of the arguments here are just silly silly and the sneering and name calling is extreme.

I will be honest, I know quite a few adults who went to boarding school and they all talk about missing out on ‘something’ emotional during those years. There is of course much debate around boarding school syndrome and the life long impact of not having present parents during those formative years.

but they also make strong friendships and dis get a good quality education.

it’s a choice I wouldn’t make, but I would vilify someone for chowing this route for their child.

To answer the original question - outside of holidays and exeats, we speak every day on the phone and I drive there for the day at least once month. One of us always goes to performances etc, and we are happy to visit, or collect DC, anytime outside of that.

We are 3+ hours away

@tonystarksrighthand eh? Seriously!!! I'm absolutely adorned to fuckery with academic accolades which is how I can interpret an evidence base and come to the conclusion boarding school harms.

Well said @Bellyblueboy. It does undermine posters' arguments a bit when the sneering, passive-aggressiveness or name-calling is the main takeaway from a post.

I had an ex-boyfriend who was very clearly damaged from his boarding school experience (famous, well thought-of school). On the other hand, I have friends who had what seemed like a much healthier experience, with regular family contact and strong friendships as a result.

I think it's worth highlighting that he peers of people.on this board (maybe aged 30-50) would have been much more likely to have had a very different boarding school experience than a lot of kids boarding in the UK today.

My kids are only 7 and 10 but I can already see that one of them would be much more likely to benefit from something like a flexi boarding arrangement at a smallish, nurturing, arts-focused school, which my other child would by hysterical at the idea and would also be much better suited to a more rigorous STEM-focused environment. Kids are different.

The reality is that they're both at smallish local state schools that don't have great Ofsted ratings but at which they're both very happy. Their schools aren't perfect but we all make choices and we all adapt to our circumstances as best we can. (Who's to say what I'd choose if I had the choices available to families with a lot more money? )

This made my chuckle 🤭

I'm a therapist and I have seen many adult clients who are still very affected to this day by being sent to boarding school.

In my previous career I worked with a lot of people who had been to boarding school. And many of the older generation of my family were sent to boarding school.

So I've known a lot of ex-boarders. And my anecdotal data drawn from this sample suggests that boarding school produces very successful, high-achieving people, who are very traumatised.

The aggression behind the denial of the suggestion that it may be a frightening and sad experience for children is instructive. In ways that probably aren't favourable to those doing the denying.

To add that I agree with the main point that others have made, boarding schools and the reasons for people using them have changed and judging it by the adults you know now is not reliable. Obviously we won't know the affect it has on current users for a while but from my view point parents are choosing to board either through necessity, in which case they are still very present in kid's life with visits and calls, or the child is choosing it for themselves. Parenting has changed and (good) boarding schools have too.

Again the UK boarders we have definitely see parents weekly, some several times a week but for the parents who can't do that we have zoom call times too. So OP I would visit as much as feels right for you and your child rather than go on any body else's routine.

“So I've known a lot of ex-boarders. And my anecdotal data drawn from this sample suggests that boarding school produces very successful, high-achieving people, who are very traumatised.”

Our whole society is currently structured to benefit from these people over achieving and paying huge amount of taxes though for the rest of us. So what is the solution? Some people and even children are just incredibly ambitious and driven and if that drive is not fed, they are angry and can become self destructive.
I have several colleagues like that and some of their children are too and the children have chosen the boarding environment where their insatiable appetite for experience can be met and they are stimulated.

This is an incredibly odd viewpoint.

A lot of people on this thread cannot seem to be objective about this

of course there is an emotional
impact on children being separated from their parents. But it is for each Pantene to decide if the trade off is worth it for their individual child.

Is it unfair that some children have the advantage of a private education- absolutely. Is it unfair that people born to wealthy parents get a head start over other children and benefit from networks that other children will never access - of course it is!

I have sat at those dinner parties where mediocre and untalented men boast about their wealth - when daddy owns the company they work in. I know people who were sent to boarding school to make connections and who landed jobs that they would never have got based on their qualifications and intelligence alone. But their mate for boarding school did them a solid.

And do only wealth children have an ‘insatiable appetite for experience’ don’t be so bloody ridiculous.

the system is completely unfair and kids do suffer from being in boarding school - but the benefits are also huge. These
places take bog standard kids and hot house their education. That combined with the family connections and networks they build at the school is a major formula for success.

“the system is completely unfair and kids do suffer from being in boarding school - but the benefits are also huge. These
places take bog standard kids and hot house their education. That combined with the family connections and networks they build at the school is a major formula for success.”

that isn’t true. Involved parents who push their kids at home can often do more than kids at boarding school. Kids at boarding school need to be self driven to make the most of the opportunity.

I agree - I didn’t say it was the best - I am just being balanced. There are advantages of a boarding school education.

personally I don’t believe those advantages are worth it for the emotional impact. But each parent will make that judgement themselves.

I think it depends how you define success.

We all live and work in a capitalist world whether we like it or not, and to succeed in this world, you have to play the game.

However, if your definition of success is possessing healthy, enjoyable, functional relationships, then boarding school has been proven again and again to lead to depression, anxiety, divorce, intimacy issues, addiction, hoarding disorders, domestic violence and a general fucked-upness in later life psychologically.

Choose your poison I suppose. 🫤

“However, if your definition of success is possessing healthy, enjoyable, functional relationships, then boarding school has been proven again and again to lead to depression, anxiety, divorce, intimacy issues, addiction, hoarding disorders, domestic violence and a general fucked-upness in later life psychologically.”

A lot of the very high powered jobs in the City of London, leading FTSE 100 companies, running media empires, being high profile politicians can also lead to many of those things!

Huge success and the need for it is often also pathological.

To be perfectly honest I wish I'd been sent to boarding school. I can almost guarantee it was the correct environment for me. I feel sad that i chose not to when offered.

“To be perfectly honest I wish I'd been sent to boarding school. I can almost guarantee it was the correct environment for me. I feel sad that i chose not to when offered.”

Most DC these days go at 13 or 16 plus, following their own request. Many parents do not want them to go and miss them! But some DC are very independent and love that kind of environment of full on work, extra curricular, friends etc. For others it is easier than travelling hours every day. Top oversubscribed boarding schools do not want to take kids who do not want to go or are unlikely to thrive there.

The way I see it is that some kids are ready to leave home at 18 for uni, some at 16, some at 13 some not until past 25. Personalities really vary even in individual families. Lots of my colleagues have a mix of boarders and day which I find surprising, but when they are following a child’s lead, it makes sense.

To answer OPs question, my colleagues on the whole have weekly boarders. Those with supposedly exeat only boarders seem to visit a lot! Either watching matches, concerts or taking them out for Sunday lunch etc at least once a week. But then their boarders tend to live within max 90 minutes travelling distance, which I assume was deliberate so they can see them a lot to maintain a strong connection. Apparently some of the kids start finding it uncool and annoying after a certain age. I have also heard that the Sixth Formers tend to then ask to come home more often to have more freedom in Lower Sixth but by Upper Sixth they want to stay to work as much as possible and fit stuff in. So it really is a combo of what year the kids are in, how far away the school is etc

Sounds like you have a few issues there @leftandaright

If you don't agree with boarding school then get off the Boarding School board! This was set up to be a safe space for those parents who chose to send their DC to boarding school. It isn't AIBU/chat board.