How often do you visit your boarding child?

[Layinwait]

Just that really! How often do you visit?

Bit naive, this is MN.

Naive to think that people can scroll past a boarding school post, on the boarding school board, without feeling the need to force their views on others? Maybe a bit 😄 Maybe naive to assume that grown ups can act like grown ups.

If you need a ‘safe space’ to discuss your child’s education, then maybe you need to reevaluate your choices.

No a safe space away from judgey sanctimonious posters who have no clue about individual circumstances. FYI my child doesn't board but does attend a boarding school as a day pupil.
It is up to each individual parent how they choose to parent their child and I don't know of any other situation where people feel they have a right to cruelly critique other people's parenting decisions. It is disgusting the vitriol against parents who chose boarding for their children. Just a load of keyboard warriors.
If you dont have children at boarding school yourself then stay off the Boarding School board. Parents on this board have made a choice based on their personal circumstances and some random person criticising them isn't going to change their mind so it is just a waste of time and energy.

Mine ASKED to board for sixth form, before anyone piles on, and comes home Saturday after matches until Sunday at 8. I go to watch matches sometimes mid-week , and there are various mixers and parents events which also offer the opportunity for a chat and a hug

we spend less time together but it tends to be quality time, if that makes sense.

quite a few ‘day’ pupils have also chosen to board instead as they move up the school.

I just don’t get boarding school it’s our role as parents to bring up our children, to really be there for them when they need us, they grow up so quickly so much is missed if you’re basically seeing them once a week. Sad really

I'm assuming you didn't put your DC in nursery or use childcare of any kind, and are at home when your children leave for school and are home on their return?

Lucky I didn’t use childcare due to mine and my DHs work pattern but in the grand scheme a bit of a poor comparison. With boarding school it’s kind of like parenting remotely and as many studies have shown the damage in adult hood is v common.

Well who could possibly have predicted this thread would jump the shark. 🤪

It's not really 'parenting' though is it. It's paying a business to raise your child so you don't have to.

@ell87 there are many reasons why parents choose this option, maybe suspend judgement unless you have walked a mile in their shoes.

Bloody hell, you’re the one doing the trolling with that OTT spite fest.

I have. I went to boarding school at 11. It was a horrendous experience. My parents lived 30 miles away. They visited once a month and I came home for the weekend once a month.
They never asked me how I was and to be honest I was too afraid to tell them.
We went through a lot of abuse there, both sexual and psychological.
I belong to an online group for ex boarders who all have the same experience.
I left school in 2005 and decided not to go back to my parents again and haven't seen them since.

@nomoreacorns what sort of reply do you expect from someone who dislikes raising their child that much they'd pay tens of thousands not to do it.

It takes a special kind of arsehole that goes onto a specific board that they have no interest in just to troll people!

@ell87 I'm very sorry that you had such a terrible experience and it is appalling that it happened. However we can only speak from our own experience and DD attends a boarding school as a day pupil. She has friends who board and they are happy, outgoing children who in the majority of cases chose to board.
Safeguarding procedures have improved drastically over the last decade and abuse can happen at any school, in any environment. Schools and society are much more keyed into safeguarding but I would never minimise the experience you went through and you have every right to feel how you feel about boarding. All I know is that DD feels safe and happy at her school, as do her friends who board there.

Triggered? The only ones incandescent with rage and hell bent on denigrating types of schools they have not chosen for their own children, are the parents who have come on to a forum they (supposedly!) have no connection to and then proceeded, in significant numbers, to lambast the parents who do know what they are talking about on the forum where they do actually belong.

I could not be happier with the decisions we have made as a family with regard to my dc’s education and as a result of which, can only smile at the vociferous attempts by the ignorant to convince me, with many years direct experience, that I have done wrong. That said, I appreciate that the luck of the birth draw is on our side and that financial stability affords our family choices that most cannot enjoy and this makes for a stable, loving platform from which my dc have had an indecent amount of privilege through the choices we have been able to offer them, one of which being a boarding school which has enabled superior academic and extra curricular opportunities and a much broader spectrum of friends than they could have enjoyed had they gone to our local day school. We live in a parochial corner of the uk where every child in the catchment school is firmly C of E and Caucasian. Nothing wrong with that but compared to their boarding school, it’s a limiting existence on many levels.

instead you make me smile with your futile and pointless efforts. Like Flat-Earthers, you may passionately believe you know better but those with access to modern day, first hand knowledge, can simply smile sweetly and pat these folk on their merry, small-minded way.
So off you trot, you lot, back to the other forums you actually belong on and take your judgey pants, pulled up high to your navel, with you.

Gosh you must really be feeling the guilt of subbing your parental responsibilities out to other to write that amount of nonsense in an attempt to justify your choice. Sadly it's been long since shown that 'superior academic and extra curricular activities' don't begin to make up for the emotional damage done by parents who can't be arsed with the days to day of bringing up their own children.

As if to perfectly illustrate the wilful ignorance I alluded to, along comes insideoutupsidedown with wishy washy wild claims of irrefutable emotional damage to every child currently boarding because those dastardly and EVIL parents, (thousands upon thousands of us apparently, ) loathe their children so very much that they cannot wait to pack them off to a wicked school with slop for breakfast, gruel for lunch and a hefty whack with the cane for supper.

Yada yada yada …. When you have experience of being a boarding parent, when you know what the pros (and cons) of a boarding school education brings and how, on balance, we, the informed parents, have come to our choices and, shock horror, are happy with the outcome and yet……and yet, still love our children just as much as the next mother does just as our children love us, the same as any other family irrespective of what school they bloody go to , please pop by again to this forum you have come to troll , and provide evidence (nb the plural of anecdote is not data) of the emotional abuse you accuse us of.

Have a nice life won’t you and try to be a little less intolerant and a little bit more empathetic to those people you don’t know? Who knows - you might even expand your mind and learn something beyond your own tiny little fiefdom?

I will NEVER have experience of being a boarding school parent through choice and experience. I was there from age 11 .

My parents both had 'VERY important jobs' far too important to be bothered about dull stuff like parenting and could well afford for child care to be something that someone else could do like the cleaning and the garden.

My older brother was in boarding school from 8. My younger brother from 7. I don't remember growing up with either of them. My older brother committed suicide at 19. My youngest is on his fifth marriage.. I am on my third.

Our parents had money . So their neglect was socially acceptable. Had they been poor we would all have been in care .

Don't tell me there are 'good reasons' to decide to have kids and then justify why you can't put them to bed and read them a story .. have supper with them and ask about their day .. take them to clubs and meet their friends .

It's a cop out for rich parents who want to live their lives without the inconvenience of raising their kids .

This is truly tragic and I’m sorry that this has clearly destroyed a whole family’s life but as I said above, the plural of anecdote is not data - and for the majority in uk boarding schools today, the experience is wholly positive.

I now understand why your opinion was so clearly biased and coloured as your personal experience has understandably skewed your opinion of ALL boarding schools and parents which is unfair and inaccurate.

I am surprised someone who has had such a terrible experience with boarding spends anytime trawling boarding forums to get involved.

“I hate the termtime at home when it’s so quiet and boring in the house”

Out of interest, why do you board your DC then?

@kimchiforever & @leftandaright (especially you) disgusting & bitter replies. Guilt maybe?