Boarding school - qs for those who have been or who have sent their kids...

[CountessDracula]

Just wondered

If you went, did you like it and why - or did you not like it and if not, why not?

If your children go, why did you send them? And do they like it? If they don't, what do you do about it?

Dh, dbrother and I have been talking about this all night and I would be interested in your views.

[marialuisa]

I came home for my teenage years which was a very good thing and can honestly say that day school was fine. I am very independent and self-reliant but i don't think it was worth it. Incidentally the school I went to has only just allowed pupils unlimited to access to phone calls home (because parents were giving the kids mibiles). Until this term you were allowed one 10 min phone call home once a week.

Can't quite believe I'm agreeing with Coddy on something

[codswallop]

ML! I never htink of us us agreeing!

[codswallop]

shite I meant dis a greeing!

[Philly]

I boarded from 12 to 18 and apart from the first term was pretty happy,cried for 2 days when I left!But for me school was an escape from the responsibilities of home life,at school I could be my age ,have fun and be myself.It probbaly helped that my nature is to be a conformist.

Personally I would only send any of mine if they had a particular talent that could only be served that way,they would have to win a scholarship anyway and also not until at least 12.Before that time is a difficult conceptand also I think you have to have your roots and identity firmly placed in your family.

[marialuisa]

no, we're agreeable sorts!

[OldieMum]

I boarded in the 6th Form. I found it hard to leave home at first, though I also had friends who were relieved to escape from witnessing their parents' ailing marriages. Once the homesickness wore off, I loved it, but it was an unusual school - an international 6th form college, without the snobberies and petty restrictions other people on this thread experienced. However, I still can't understand why parents might choose to send much younger children to boarding school. I started a thread on this last year and there were many interesting comments then.

[Issymum]

I didn't go to boarding school but my brother did. He went to a choir school when he had just turned 7. It was in the wilds of Monmouthshire and positively monastic with vast chilly dorms of iron beds, scarey matrons and just one exeat a term. I remember him being very homesick, missing my mother and longing for family life. I think he was OK there, although he said that towards the end he did wonder whether he ought to tell someone that the maths teacher/scout master was a paedophile . He then went to boarding school in our home town (boarding was a condition of a music scholarship), but became a day-boy at round about 14.

DB is sensitive and very individualistic (he now lives with his family in a remote corner of Tasmania as a part-time anaethetistic consultant, owns a garden nursery and raises his own chickens and vegetables). He says that the worst thing about boarding school, apart from horrible food, monotony, sharing his living space with barbaric boys and petty rules, was the fact that he never really got to know our father.

I would send the DDs to boarding school. But only if they begged me to. And worked in the summer holidays to earn the fees

[Issymum]

BTW OldieMum I've got a Brazilian friend who boarded at an International Sixth Form college and absolutely loved it.

Maybe the sixth form is the right time to board?

[Blackduck]

Blimey Sallystrawberry your family is almost identical to mine. Both my brothers went to boarding school (dad in the forces...) and the older one hated it (my mum admits it was probably their biggest mistake with regards to him), my other brother was less bothered and 'survived' it. When it came to me she didn't want me to go - and she knew I'd get my secondary education in two schools maximum.....having said that 'civvy' school was the worst experience ever - I hated it.....

[Ameriscot2004]

"how lovely for the kids who live nearby if the school policy is weekly boarding, but how bloody horrible for the kids whose parents live far away "

Surely that's something for the parents to investigate when choosing a school? If a child is unable to go home at the weekend, then surely they need to go to a school that offers more traditional boarding?

[bakedpotato]

ameriscot, as you say, i think a lot more schools are relaxing rules about children going home at w/es, which is all very well but means kids from overseas can't help but feel left out. certainly my school didn't advertise itself as weekly boarding, but that turned out to be the reality, somewhat to my parents' consternation...

[JoolsToo]

I would NEVER send my kids to Boarding School, ever, ever, no, no, no!

Why would I want to send the most precious things in the world to me - out of my life, away from my love - it'd be cruel to me never mind them!

[Yorkiegirl]

Message withdrawn

[hmb]

Never been myuself but I met lots of [people who had gone to bording school when I was at uni. Some loved it and some hated it. I once asked a good friend if he had felt angry that his parents had 'got rid of him'. He looked at me as if I was completly bonkers and said ,'Well at 14, who did you want to spend time with, your family or your mates?' That give me pause for thought.

As an adult I have also met lots of parents who have sent their kids to board as DH is in the RAF and it is often the only way that the kids can get a reasonable education without being moved every 18 months - 2 years.

Depends on the child and the school, I think.

[Cam]

My younger brother boarded from 11 and loved it as his school was very sports orientated, which interested him far more than the academic side. He was also a team player in all areas of life so fitted in perfectly. I think personality has a lot to do with it. For myself, I would not even contemplate sending a child to board under senior school age and then, only if very particular circumstances applied like excelling in a certain subject (and with the child's express agreement).

[prufrock]

Dh went to boarding school 13-18 and loved it. He is quite emotionally distant, but I think that was probably due to his parents, not due to the fact that he went to boarding school. (It was the only way his mother could manage to get high every night)
I think it has given him the advantage of being incredibly confident. He went to the same school as Mark Thatcher (but later) and a newspaper article recently said that their school gives really quite average people the confidence to believe that they are brilliant -not that dh is average at all. He is also able to get on with all sorts of different people, and the old school tie network is, rightly or wrongly, incredibly useful to his business.

He is determined that ds will follow him, and if ds goes it seems only fair that dd should too. But I would not send them, or keep them there, if either of them were really against it, and would make sure we were within an hours drive of their schools so they could come home at every exeat.

[Cam]

Dh went to one of the big public schools as a day boy and, although he underachieved academically, has always had the confidence to carry him through any situation.

[codswallop]

I used to howl down th phone to my MUm
dad in forces too

[prufrock]

Oh Dh completely underacheived academically as well - a D and U at A-level I think. In fact I often bring up the difference in our results when I am in one of my drunken, socialist "We will support the state system by putting our children through it" moments

[codswallop]

dh wentr o monmoth
really good sport but shite at loking after kids
Kids cryin becasue they wet their bed
pets tortured, prefects ruling hte school
at mine there were multiuple suicides and break outs
one girl wran way to a loo at a london train station fro 2 days
one girl jumped out of a window and my sister saw her fall
horrendous

[codswallop]

imo why have a dog if you send it to a kennel

would never baord full time
part time - i cna see the point especeially fro unusually talented kids

[codswallop]

( sorry willl stop now)
like my niece who was a fabbo swimmer - they spent dso much time on the m6 they may have well sent her to a b school.