why do you send your child to boarding school?

[FunnysInLaJardin]

Not wishing to be inflammatory and not really an AIBU, but honestly wondering why any parent would at any age send their DC to boarding school.

Aside from forces children, why would you do it?

I have a colleague at work who is sending her child in year 9, and have known lots of kids and parents who have been, but to me as a parent it is unfathomable.

One colleagues daughter really wanted to go to day school here, and he wouldn't hear of it. It was boarding at all costs.

Aside from the sheer cost, doesn't the emotional apspect bother you? A school cannot parent a teen or child like a parent can.

Really interested in a different perspective

They get asked that quite a lot and both without hesitation always say yes. I’d love to have them at home, in their beds, here with me, but the absolute joy they get from performing and even just from the every day slog of their lessons makes me think it’s worth it. Plus they’ve both had their academic needs met in ways which just wouldn’t have happened at our local comp.

A friend was a long haul air hostess and sent hers fairly young. She could be away 2-3 days whenever, and they had consistent care. Worked for them better than a patchwork of nannies/babysitters/grandparents and made it simple for her. She said they were totally off her plate when they went, whereas cobbling together 24 care was always a lot of prep and sweeping up loose ends.

DD was so bloody difficult I’d have considered it just for respite it if I could. She also likes the constant company of lots of familiar people and general busyness, and that’s hard to facilitate as a lone parent with a single child. A couple of full days a week where no care is my problem would more than treble my productivity too, I reckon.

Middle class neglect, no different than parents who neglect their children and have them removed by the state. Apart from service children any parent who sends their child to boarding school before age 16 should never have bothered having them.

@VariationsonaTheme i suppose I just wonder if it’s one of those enormous decisions that should be taken out of children’s hands because the lifelong ramifications are a bit beyond their understanding , if that makes sense

‘am considering boarding, as DC have interests that will inevitably take up a lot of evenings and possibly weekends, and easier logistically for them’

god, children, such an inconvenience! Logistically easier for you, you mean. My DC also have interests that take up evenings and weekends, sports, hobbies, friends, family stuff and we both work FT. Yet somehow it all works.

I'm pretty normal and very well adjusted (even if I say so myself!) as well!

Because an Owl delivered the enrolment forms.

Two close friends, both very sensible, resilient, sent away to board at seven really struggled as their own children grew up to comprehend how their parents could have sent them away.
One really felt that becoming a parent to an older child, changed how she felt about her own parents. Not in a good way.

My dd chose to go at 16, she applied for and won the bursary. It's been the making of her and she was so much more confident at university, really coming into its own when they went into lockdown, she and her friends from her school coped very well

@Lowcarbfest with respect you're missing my point.

Which is that while any school I agree that there will be young people at risk
a) the school has a safeguarding obligation to the children and young people in their care b) this is heightened by the fact that their parents or caters aren't there

I really wanted to go to boarding school when I was around 10. I imagined it would be like Malory Towers. I also wanted to be a ballet dancer and asked Mum to send off for the prospectus for the White Lodge Royal Ballet School.

We took one look at the fees and it was out of the question (and tbh I wasn't talented enough or dedicated enough). But the idea of boarding school definitely came from me, and I may well have pushed to go, had we had the money.

My home life was happy. So it is possible for the idea to come from the child rather than the parents.

I know two people who boarded. One was a poor child at a posh school (on a bursary). He hated it. The other was at a less posh school and was sent there to protect him from a long and serious illness their sibling was being treated for. He loved it.

Your friend sounds delightful.

I'm not sure you can compare the experience of a 7 year old sent away to a school in the 1960s/70s to a 13 year old now. Most can come home pretty much any weekend they like, they have phones, they have fun. parents can visit all the time.

Also do remember kids living on islands and very rurally have no choice but board, these are state boarding schools rather than fancy posh ones. I'm pretty sure the kids of the Scottish islands aren't all screwed up as some here imply

The people I know who boarded mostly did it because they lived in a rural/remote area where there weren’t decent schools within day commuting distance. A local sixth form provides state boarding for students from the Falkland Islands because I believe they don’t have any other way to do A levels.
I always wanted to board when I was a child. If our DC is a girl I’d consider sending her to Downe House, they have a term in France which sounds fantastic.

I boarded for sixth form- my choice. My parents didn’t do a great deal of parenting to be honest so I didn’t feel I was missing out on much not being at home.

It’s not really neglect is it? Have you ever been to a boarding school? Bloody expensive places, with top quality facilities and teaching. Nurses on hand 24/7 if anyone hurt themselves or was unwell.

When I was younger people told me I was a rich kid who had everything, now on mn I’m the result of neglect. It’s laughable.

I think it’s a great option for 6th form if they want to go but otherwise it’s so far off my radar I can’t even compute it

‘suppose I just wonder if it’s one of those enormous decisions that should be taken out of children’s hands’

no, let the 8 year old decide if they should leave their family to go live in an institution… what harm could it do?!

the people I know who’ve boarded and suffered, all said the same thing, they felt they had no choice. From the boy who wanted to please his father by going to the ‘family’ school, to the boy who cried every night for months but was told he’d settle in and encourage to tell his mother his was doing okay, to the girl who rebelled and played up making her parents believe it was def the right choice. Or the boy who went because his sibs went so he decided he had To stay and make it work so he wasn’t the failure.

I was mad about boarding school books when I was a kid, thought it sounded like an amazing, fun place to be. Then my elder sister spent a year as a boarding mistress at a local school and she used to bring home to my mum the waifs and strays that were left there over the holidays. I remember one little girl (same age as me, about 12) telling me that next year she wouldn't be at the school because her parents were coming to get her. My sister whispered in my ear "They all say that..."

I boarded for 6th form. Loved it. Would send my kids. Not a fan of your judginess.

Weekly boarding will save DS ten hours a week in commuting. Time in which he can spend doing all sorts of extra curricular, not being sat in a school bus etc etc.

I loved boarding school. I was the only academic child in a big family (one of five), SAHM, WOH dad, grandparents lived with us as well as assorted relatives at times in a 3 bedroom council house. There was no space, so much noise not to mention the chain smoking. Food was better than at home.

Boarding school gave me the freedom to be me. To read as much as I wanted, to have bath water untainted by manky siblings (loved them really!), encouraged by teachers to learn and enjoy. I got the attention I never got at home. I also had far more freedom at school - we were allowed to go to a disco in town once a week.

My school was a state school on a Scottish island, no fees.

My goddaughter does flexi-boarding in secondary, which works perfectly for her and her family. She's usually in two nights a week, which is really just like having regular sleepovers with friends, and it means she isn't coming back from activities late at night only to go back to school ten hours later. And her parents get her delightful company five nights a week.

I'd do that in a heartbeat.

Boarding school in my mind is no different to having children and working fulltime so they're in school/nursery/childminder from 8am to 6pm. What's the point in having them? Always a SAHP?until high school and even then home from school day end.

Exeat wasn't half term at my school. Exeat was when you went away for the weekend with your parents permission

Same at my ds' boarding school.