Home sick and wants to leave

[Peggycat]

How do you all cope when your child messages saying they are finding boarding school too stressful and want to leave? He only started in Sept, and I imagine homesickness is hitting hard. Any useful strategies, or things you have said to your child that helped them? Thanks for any advise offered.

What year has he started in@Peggycat ?

He started year 9.

Can he leave?

Have you considered letting him come home?
We stuck with it and I very much regret that now.
The pastoral care in our school was particularly poor. DS said he pitied the boys who wanted to be there, he thought their homes must be dreadful.

If you carry into year 10 you will have to wait for a natural break after GCSES . My advice would be to listen to your son but I have the benefit of hindsight.

Our eldest boarded for 2 months and never settled, he was boarding due to where we lived at the time. We made the decision to move and brought him home, it was awful leaving him and I didn’t want that for our other 2 children. On hindsight I’m glad we made the decision to move so none of them had to board.

Plenty of children do eventually settle but DS1 was losing weight, not eating and terribly home sick.

We live abroad (moving back to the UK next year) so if he did leave boarding he would start a school where we are now and then move back to the UK to start another school next year. He asked to go to boarding school so he didn't have to do that, and we agreed it is the best option.
Any advise on how I can help him adjust, or things I can say to help him?

He won't, he will just shut down emotionally and it will cause problems in your relationship in the future as he isn't ready, at 13 to live away from his parents in another country! Bring him home or move back to the UK. Your kid is more important than anyone career!

Speak to his house mother/master and let them know he is finding it tough. I definitely wouldn’t let him leave before Christmas so maybe suggest sitting it out until then. I am sure he will settle, my son initially loved boarding (first week) then decided he didn’t like it. I told him we would see how he felt at the end of winter term. By then he had decided he liked it again! Even when we moved closer to the school he hardly ever came home and spent 5 happy years boarding.

Thank you for a more positive response. Good to hear your son settled. Mine has been happy until now, he has friends and likes the school. I do believe he is homesick and struggling with the organisation required of him at boarding school.
I will chat with him later and then contact his house parents.

Well, he has tried it and it sounds like it isn't working for him. I'd let him leave, enrol in local school, and move to another in the UK next year. The 'faff' of moving schools is absolutely worth it if his happiness and emotional wellbeing is at stake.

I would agree at least to stick it out to the end of term. There are lots of nay-sayers around boarding in general on here (and I am always amazed how quickly they spot and jump onto new threads), but it does work for lots of families. Your son has been there what, three weeks? He won't have built up any meaningful friendships yet and you feel a terribly wrong way away. And the autumn term is a long one, with lengthy gaps between holidays and exeats.

Speak to the housemaster and see what they can do. And make sure to ask how he is the rest of the time. If he being a loner and not engaging in activities or speaking to people, then unless they can do something to bring him round then it sounds like he is in the wrong environment. But if he is happy at school, but just missing mum, there are ways to help him with that.

When my DS started boarding (a lot younger than yours) we were told by everyone to encourage him to stay in at weekends other than exeats, and we had some terrible tears. Then we started letting him choose to come home and three out of four weekends he still chose to stay in, and when he does come home he is keen to get back early on Sunday.

Do you ever send him anything? Phone calls are important but a short letter or card, with maybe a comic or game and a few sweets (not too many - little and often works best) can go a long way to making a boy or girl know they are loved, and gives them something to show their friends. Just make sure you focus on what they are up to and not what you are doing without them, or you may make his homesickness ten times worse.

Good luck!

Definitely chat to the houseparents to see what he's like the rest of the time (ie. not last thing at night when he's most tired, missing you most and then missing you even more hearing your voice down the phone.)

Might you be able to visit and stay close by for a while in an AirB&B or similar? Some kids are ok with the boarding but not being an international boarder in another country from their parents. Half term's in three weeks for most boarding schools, if it's at all feasible to come and stay near-ish for a few weeks in the run-up to half term, go to his matches, visit on the weekends etc to perhaps see if it's an issue with boarding full stop, or just that you are in another country.

I was terribly homesick when I was a boarder aged 11. I cried daily for months. It took me until at least mid-way through the second term (so from September to February) to get used to boarding. I then settled and loved it.

Unfortunately, due to a change in my parents' circumstances, I then had to become a day girl from Year 8 and it was awful. I missed boarding so, so much and I was distraught for years. I still wish I'd stayed boarding for the remainder of secondary school.

I appreciate every child is different, but I'd encourage your son to try and stick it out, because the alternative seems so disruptive.

There are organisations that organise home stay visits for boarders who can't go home during the term, or even the holidays. They allocate a family/person/couple to a boarder and those people have the boarder to stay for the weekend, half term, or as often as is needed. They will also go to sports days, presentation days, nativity plays, whatever, in place of the parent if required.

It's not the same as being at home, but if you could find someone who he could make a bond with, and who could take him out of school every so often, that might help.

House parents usually have a gut feeling about whether a child will settle long term or not so do ask their advice.

I'm a former boarder and have a DS who started boarding at Y6, so I have experienced this both myself and as a parent. It can be hard to start with and when my DS first boarded I told him up-front that he would probably go through a period of adjustment and that he might feel homesick to start with, but that it was completely normal and it would get better. It took him almost the whole of the first term to start to feel better, but I remember the week before he broke up for Christmas he said 'Guess what? I didn't feel homesick at all this week!'.

He was allowed to call home as often as he wanted (not what happened in my day!), and he called me every evening. His school had very good pastoral care, but he needed to just touch base with home, ask about the cat, find out what I'd been doing, tell me what he'd been doing, the kind of stuff we'd have chatted about if we'd walked home from school together. He was homesick, but the staff were great at keeping him busy and providing support, so as well as telling your DS that what he's feeling is normal and okay, I would reach out to the houseparents or boarding staff and let them know that he's having a tough time as they'll be used to dealing with homesick DC and will know to seek him out and support him.

Unless things are really bad I honestly wouldn't pull him out. It's only week 4 so he hasn't had a chance to settle in properly yet and if he's been happy up to now, hopefully it's just a blip and he'll get to grips with the organisational side of things and start to enjoy himself again.

1. talk to houseparent and let them know
2. tell child you visit on Saturday and what to they need you to bring
3. talk about what child thinking about, and feeling & about strategies for combatting loneliness
4. it will pass, it’s not permanent

mine was very homesick in year 9, I could not “pander” to his homesick because I was dealing with another child with major illness. I didn’t have the ability to visit for few weeks. Part of reason he was boarding was me dealing with sick child and elderly relative.

He just had to stick with boarding, and figure it out. He’s at a top uni now. So he survived and thrived.

It’s too early to tell yet. Give it until at least Christmas. A lot of children go through phases of homesickness for the first few months. He may love it again in a few weeks.

This is just part and parcel of being a child at boarding school. What did he expect?

Just to balance out some of the replies above:

At my DD school (boarding from 11) a handful of girls felt very homesick for the first few weeks, one of the worst cases being a girl who would cry almost daily nearly the entire first term. This girl is one of my DD best friends today (a few years on) and told me she is so glad her parents didn’t take her out as today she loves the school and her friends there.

1. tell child you visit on Saturday and what to they need you to bring

She can’t visit. She’s not living in the uk .

My OH is 58 and still talks of the utter misery of boarding school.
He was a sporty, clever child who just failed to thrive at his boarding school. He describes it as permanent anxiety and being left with a feeling of despair.
His relationship with his parents has never fully recovered.

I can't understand why you haven't brought him home already.

This is your child saying he wants to come home ffs. Bring him home!

I boarded and was homesick for probably the first half of the first term, after which I really loved it (and like a PP, I also opted to stay in on weekends when there was too much fun to be had!) Did 6 happy years as a boarder.... and have a great relationship with my parents too! Crazy huh!? My boys do varying degrees of boarding now at prep level.
It's not for everyone, but those for whom it works, really seem to thrive.
If it's not going to work at all for him, I'd say this term is probably long enough for you to know, but again, everyone's different and it depends on the degree of homesickness as others have said.

Really good advice from @cheezncrackers and @tachetastic. The House parent and Matron are key and will have enormous relevant experience to draw upon.
At this point of the Autumn term the novelty will have worn off, your DS will be really tired and the Christmas festivities are a long way off.
Your reasons for opting for boarding are sound and at 13 he has a good prospect of settling and enjoying the experience. But for now the downsides are front and centre but the upsides haven't yet manifested.
My advice would be not to pull him out at this stage, because it's far too early to know if this is strange setting, lack of established friendships, tiredness, unfamiliar routines etc talking. Along with the great practical suggestions already made, I would give thought to how he can have the best possible quality of sleep at school, because a) bed time is when homesickness kicks in and b) good sleep more than almost anything else will contribute to his well-being and resilience.
Good luck!