The mental trauma caused by boarding

Agree with this 100%. I've lost the will to try to debate rationally with someone whose completely entrenched view is hopefully the practice of sending children to [boarding schools] will die out. It isn't clear what the OP's actual problem with modern boarding schools is, given that she has neither attended one nor had children who attend one. Other than sheer prejudice and a fixation on research which is of some interest but is not the universal truth which she takes it to be.

If your face doesn’t fit & you’re fat, short, plain & no use to anyone at games, God help you. Children feeling pressure, who are unhappy themselves, turn on others & find a victim. It’s high risk, esp pre 16.

I'm grateful to the OP for starting to his thread, being an ex boarding parent is very lonely. I feel that I am judged ( rightly so ) for making what can now see as a dreadful decision.

The boarding school world is so toxic, it's full of the most dreadful people. It's hard to leave once you have signed up. We eventually did and will probably take things further if our son wishes to do so in the future.

If the things that are covered up at these schools were to happen at a state school there would be uproar. The behavior that is normalized is disturbing. Most of the people who work there couldn't function in the outside world.

My son attended one of most well known boys schools. Those who say modern boarding school life is different are taking nonsense. They know that of course, you just have look at the people who are drawn to work in these awful places.

One issue is they don’t pay the pastoral staff enough. Sometimes you have one housemaster or mistress effectively looking after the well being of up to 60. They might have a number 2 & a few matrons (at best well meaning, at worst completely out of touch & sometimes past retirement age). So, inadequate back up.

There are some who are exceptional & go above & beyond. They will do all in their power to help & empower children. Others, talk a good game & play favourites but you’ll need to be an experienced boarding parent to spot the difference.

It isn’t optimal for a ‘houseparent’ to also have teaching responsibilities & poss a young family to raise in a cramped flat onsite. They then, unsurprisingly, don’t go looking for trouble, or traumatised teens, put it that way. Anyone hiding mental health struggles is likely to slip under radar.

Crying often actively discouraged as contagious but the toughest can be heard howling in the shower, when they think they can’t be heard. Lots of ‘invisible’ bullying from golden pupils & a blind eye turned. If bullied esp by a favourite, you’re clearly over sensitive.

I was a boarder at Woolverstone Hall ( The poor man's Eton ) from 1979 - 83 . What happened to me wasn't good , I am now 56 and still dealing with the aftermath 45 years on . Not good .

You would have to debate that the modern foundation of children development made up of attachments - safety and love - is wrong.

I don't need to attend or have children attending boarding school to know what my children want/need the most - love and care from us, parents, and a family where they belong. Depriving a child from that without a good reason, the product is a distorted self and a life long loss of sense of belonging.

I don't know lots of "posh families". But the two boarders I know were certainly affected in a bad way. One is of my ex bf, the other is of my best friend 's DD.

Schools can't replace a loving family for any young child (under 13).

I chose not to have my children board and my psychiatrist father had a lot of patients damaged by boarding, but parents can choose and I appreciate not everyone agrees with me. Even if there were just a 1 in 100 chance a child were damaged I would not do it. I used to go at Christmas to a boarding school dinner and ask the teenage boys sometimes if they would send their children and their answers were usually about how they coped - that there were hard things and how they managed. Their answers never made me think I wish my children had gone here.

Boarding is completely different these days. For the right child it can work brilliantly. For others it's not right. Like everything in life.

@Legoninjago1 the problem is that you have no way of assessing that until it’s too late. You can do as many visits and as much research as is humanly possible but you have absolutely no control over who will be in your child’s dorm/ house/ year and this can be the source of all problems.

There was an article in the Times a couple of weeks show about a mother who recently extracted her daughter from a leading girls school after a spate of horrific bullying. She was in shock at the school’s attempts to minimise and cover up the behaviour (which would have been criminal in the real world). Naturally the school had a well publicised “zero tolerance” policy on bullying.

The article struck a chord with me as it precisely mirrored our experience of a leading boarding school where my son and his entire year group were subjected to the most hideous violent and sustained bullying campaign by a small group from the year above. We were completely shocked that the school just wanted to cover it up but not as shocked as we were by our fellow parents who seemed to be of the view that they should suck it up. We came to the conclusion that they felt it was more important that their children mix with suitable (I e posh) people than anything else and they didn’t want to cause trouble.

I come from generations of upper class privately educated stock and I am glad that the old school tie networking thing is on its knees. I have to confess to being secretly pleased that such people can no longer waltz into prime investment banking / legal jobs at the expense of more talented individuals.

We had a very similar experience our son's school. We removed our son , most families didn't. It's poor pastoral care is well documented on here but I never cease to be amazed that parents are willing to overlook such disturbing behavior. This would never be acceptable in a state school.

It is also our experience that parents actively collude in the minimisation and cover up of bullying at boarding school.

A couple of months back I had supper with friends whose daughter had just started at a co Ed boarding school. She was laughingly telling us about the initiation ceremony the new kids had to go through which sounded pretty horrible. I was very surprised that the parents laughed along with her - yes it was clearly something that the daughter (cool, confident and very socially popular) found funny but could they not see that for another type of child it could be really quite traumatic. There’s definitely an “I’m all right Jack attitude” with some boarding parents which I find very upsetting.

Just because you chose not to send your children to schools that members of your family suffered at doesn’t mean that many parents do not.
My parents sent my brother and I away even though they hated boarding schools.
This was in the 70’s when it was the done thing.
Please do not minimise the suffering that being sent away causes so many.

When my DC joined their prep school as a day pupil I was quite open to the idea of boarding - I thought it would teach discipline, routine, independence etc.

By the time we left, there's absolutely no way I would recommend boarding to anyone (at least not at prep school age).

We used to take one of the boarding kids to weekend sports matches with my DC, about an hour away from the school. The stories we would hear of what goes on in the boarding house were just something else. It sounded like lord of the flies.

It could be our prep were particularly bad. Ours were always talking about their zero-tolerance to bullying but tried to cover it up and minimise it whenever it occurred (we're talking stealing, fighting, racial slurs etc), so your milage may vary.

My partner was sent to board when he was 9.
At a different boarding school in his early teens some of the teachers( mostly ex army) were well known for their interest in boys. They would sit them on their knees and stare at their backsides when they were in the shower. One even slept at the end of the dorm.
as dorm prefect my dp was responsible for sending miscreant boys to one of these teachers to be punished. He lives with hideous guilt 50 years on and feels complicit in their abuse. He is currently finally having counselling.
of course he never told his parents.

I went to a Boarding school as Day pupil and I am very anti boarding as a result of some of the things I saw. Nothing that anyone would be very shocked about such as abuse etc but some of the things the olther kids said/did were heartbreaking. I also have experience via family members of 3 generations of Boarding and they are all pretty Fucked up in various ways.
I think the most telling thing is that when I look at the men I was at school with and who I keep in touch with ALL of the Boarders are divorced or never married while only a couple of the Day boys are in the same situation. Its a small sample to be fair but its there.

I appreciate this is an old thread… but I have to let the parents on here defending their decision to send their children to boarding school know that’s they must watch out for later in life.. when your children have their own children and realise what their parents have done.
I went to boarding school for 10 years. The first 5 years I absolutely hated it.. I cried and begged to go home. All of my cries were ignored.
By the time I hit secondary school I was so institutionalised that I didn’t want to go home.. I still adored my mother, right up until I became a mother myself.
I would never send my children to board, even if they begged me. If they did beg, I would consider something is pretty darn awful at home.
I am completely estranged from my mother now, she’s older and wanted me to care for her… absolutely not! I never want to see her again.
So you see, you might think you have a great relationship with your children now, but further down the line, when they become parents, things can go horribly wrong.

Having just read in the last fortnight the report about the late Smyth QC who was not employed by a boarding school in the UK but boys would go to him - it just confirmed my own view that boarding would not be for me or my children. My uncle did go (aged 4 to the boarding school his 12 year old cousin was at - a very small school - I have his 1920s school photo to this day. However he only went a few prep school years. He was the youngest boy in the school when he and his 2 younger brothers went to a state grammar,).

I agree parents can decide, but there is not a lot of refuge for children;whereas at day school you know that every single night even if school is horrible you come home to your parents. Parents can also be more of an influence on you if you are at day school (we chose fairly academic day schools like North London Collegiate, Merchant Taylors' etc) - whether parents think that is a good or a bad thing of course remains to be seen. I know one poor boy now grown up who said after his parents divorced neither parent wants him - opposite of the usual custody battle so he boarded. There will be lots of happy boarding school children too and state boarding pupils as well.

I think there must be a world of difference between going at 5 and going as a teen. It feels like an age since I posted on this thread before DD2 decided to go off to specialist music school as a full boarder at the age of 14.

With over a year under her belt I'm still not boarding's biggest fan, but she absolutely is.

pros
bags of time to practise
everything musical is on site
she loves living with her friends
she is just having a really nice time and her work life balance is brilliant
The music is obviously absolutely amazing, but the drama is too
She actually does some sport - which never happened at her old school.

cons
I really really miss her (though she doesn't miss me often)
when she is sad we are far away- though I always pick up the phone immediately
I think she misses out on the 'cultural life' that is involved in living with an ordinary politically interested family - so discussions round the table on books and current affairs etc - I've been amazed that children at boarding school don't seem to read or be interested in this sort of thing
She finds the lack of private space hard sometimes - hearing that she sometimes sits in a wardrobe with her earplugs in is not the easiest thing

I think after 14 years at home we're still her biggest influence - but I'm really glad she didn't go any earlier!

Both of my parents and all of their siblings boarded - a total of nineteen individuals. Of over sixty first cousins, only two boarded. This was partly because much better local options were available by the time my aunts and uncles had children but mainly because they would have rather chewed off their right arms than send kids to boarding school.

DH boarded from seven and went on to Eton. He had strong words with his father when our firstborn son was a baby when he said that he would never send him to boarding school under any circumstances. He tried again when the second was very young. PIL were falling over themselves to pay for everything. FIL was furious that we were breaking family tradition for generations. MIL said to me in private that she wished she had had the nerve to contest sending all her children away to board and she still grieved missing their childhoods. DH somehow managed to come out emotionally balanced and pretty much unscathed. He said being really good at sports saved him to a great extent. However, the majority of his school friends are totally emotionally messed up and have pretty much all managed to ruin their family lives in a whole range of ways. It is very sad.