Are kids who board more responsible/considerate?

[Mousecauseway]

2 DC yrs 7&8. Currently losing the will to live over the amount of prompting I need to give them in life. Eldest is generally very organised about school and school work, but regards anything else is utterly hopeless. Youngest is finding yr 7 fairly overwhelming so far. They are day pupils at a school that has boarding and I’ve been wondering who clears up after boarders? I’m assuming at school they have to clear up after themselves? Does this also translate to clearing up at home? Eldest never spontaneously; clears her plate away, picks her pjs up from the bathroom floor after a shower, puts rubbish in the bin if she’s opened a snack bar, puts laundry in the laundry basket, practices instruments, feeds her pets, brings anything in that she’s taken outside- could be shoes, board game, phone……and she also leaves socks all over the house. Youngest is marginally better. Last weekend I asked her 5 times to feed her rabbits. On the 5th time (late afternoon) I told her I wasn’t reminding her again and if she didn’t feed them they’d starve. She left her trainers outside last week. Had to ask 3 times (I knew it was going to rain). Not been formally assessed but no concerns raised re ADHD (although Dad has it).
is this normal for this age and/or would a term of boarding help?

Talking to my friends, this behaviour is somewhat normal for dc that age. It’s like the teenage brain just loses all executive functioning power for a few years. Ds has been known to walk out to the car wearing no shoes.

Does boarding make them more responsible? I think yes, in terms of personal organisation and having to deal with the natural consequences of your actions or lack thereof. If you don’t take your washing down then you won’t have any clean clothes. If you don’t charge your laptop then it’s going to be problematic for lessons the next day. If you leave your stuff lying around it will be lost. If you leave your rugby kit wet it will still be wet tomorrow and you’ll have to just put it back on. At the same time, there is a lot of structure to the day which possibly doesn’t help with learning time management etc. They also basically do no cooking and while they have to scrape plates and take their trays back to the tray trolleys, there’s no need to wash up etc. They have to keep their dorms reasonably tidy but common areas like showers are cleaned by cleaners ( but peer pressure means they don’t leave bathrooms skanky). So I would say the main thing is that they live with their choices more than they might at home because no one is chasing them.

However, not sure a term would make much difference.

Also to add, I think it’s possible to have this at home but as a parent I find it really hard to just let the natural consequences arise as quite often they at least slightly impact you too and sometimes you have to pick your battles- hard to be consistent.

I would rehome the rabbits (temporarily or permanently) and let them deal with the consequences of their own decisions as far as possible.

@SomewhereAround we had another pet. It was rehomed about 6 weeks ago because it was never looked at, nevermind fed (obv fed by me). So they know I will.

@LaPalmaLlama agree re consequences and impact. Most meaningful consequences seem to inconvenience me and/or other families more than them. I think I’m mostly quite good at battle picking, but very poor at letting them live with the consequences.

Children who board at school don't really get a choice, their life becomes part of a regimen, rather than the safe space of home IMO where they can be a bit lazy. My children are still like that at 12&16

Me and my husband both boarded…no it doesn’t necessarily instil a sense of tidiness ,neither of us are tidy (nor are our kids) even though I was doing hand washing from age 8. You forget ,boarders often have very few possessions! Tidiness is something you need to instil from a young age so kids feel they are contributing to the household ,it’s whether or not the parents have enough energy to continually reinforce the house rules. But my kids are able to cook ( we started knife skills very early) change their beds and be independent in other ways as this was important to me!

And ps, thinking of boarding a child who finds day school already overwhelming is not going to help!

I lived at uni with people who'd been boarders and whist they'd had more independence in some ways, they'd also lived life to such a regimented timetable that they seemed unused to being able to manage their own time and I'd like to say their rooms were spotless but......

I think it’s sink or swim at boarding organisation wise.

A disorganised child who boards might buck up and learn to be organised.

Or they might spend the whole time miserable because they’ve lost yet another thing or been late again and are constantly in trouble.

Hard to predict which way it will go unless you try it but that’s quite a high stakes game.

You could try replicating the things you list at home? Stuff left lying around - sweep it all into a binbag every day or 2. They will need to rummage in “lost property “ to find it. Kit needed each day - write a list but don’t remind them further.

Rubbish/plate left: these I would get cross at her for - which is what would happen if she did this at school, staff would tell her off
Pets: 2 days of not fed and the pets go. Not fair on them.

Go easy on the y7, she has a billion new school related things to remember at the moment

My dd is at uni with a number of ex-boarders - she says that almost all of them are distinguishable by the fact they’re really messy, can’t cook and have terrible table manners 🤣

So you rehomed a pet because they didn't take care of it and it was a hassle for you and now you want to board your kids for a term to teach them how to clean up after themselves so you don't have to? They are normal kids, putting in this work teaching them is just parenting. It may work, it may just damage them. No doubt they would go back to normal though once back home. Boarding school obviously works for some but to do it to help with normal parenting is a bit rubbish.

So effectively sending them away (albeit with visits) so someone else can teach them to be respectful at home?

oh gawd, I'd forgotten about the eating.....shovelling food in with one hand like someone is going to steal it from them before they finish it! Same tends to go with people who are one of numerous children IME!

School will have in place routines and prompts that work. They won't necessarily translate into a change of behaviour in other settings like university/home.

I actually think boarding school has resulted in my hoarding behaviour.

DS20 here. Boarded from Y7 - Y13. Still a messy git who needs reminding about everything. Sorry...

I boarded from 12 with parents thousands of miles away. I think from memory we had to keep our rooms pretty tidy (beds made, nothing on floor) and someone came round to check each day - maybe one of the sixth form girls in the house. Laundry day was a specific day each week for each house and you had to bring your dirty stuff down and into the big laundry bags. I don’t remember anyone ever helping us by saying right, you have PE today, don’t forget kit etc. Once a term from the age of 13 for a week we were on morning kitchen duty which meant handing out jugs of milk, setting out the cereals in the dining hall and then afterwards pouring all the waste into a big slop bucket for the local pigs. And stacking the dishwashers. We didn’t get any help packing bags for exeats or for the airport (in my case). So in hindsight we were pretty tidy but it prob helped that I was a neat and tidy person by nature and didn’t find being organised particularly difficult. Certainly no Molly coddling at my boarding school!

@Mishmashs oh god we had a pig bucket too!

A school my friends were considering includes an overnight stay as part of the application process. A few parents were subsequently advised that their children had not shown sufficient maturity to board. Their inability to take care of their own needs meant the school were not going to molly coddle them. You might be better off following through with consequences rather than resorting to boarding.