Did you go to boarding school? Come and talk to me

[OhGood]

I went to boarding school from 7, as did my brother from 5.

My DD and DS are now at these exact ages and I am suddenly being sideswiped by my feelings about this. I keep remembering how unhappy I was, and how hard I had to try to suppress my feelings when I was little, and I have a dawning awareness of how this unhappiness has probably impacted me for all of my life.

I can see how much my DCs need me and DH still, and I can't square this with being sent off to a very strict, old-fashioned school - no contact with parents except weekly letters, and only allowed out 1 weekend a month, etc. Slightly embarrassed about the strength of my emotions.

If you had a similar experience, I would love to know what you think, and how you're feeling about it now.

If you've had these feelings and resolved them, how did you do it? I don't want to wallow in this, but I feel I must do something to work through it.

We didn't have midnight feasts, but we did live on Supernoodles and white toast because the food was shit. I don't think parents realise that the areas of the school they see on their little tours aren't the areas their kids are living in. Even the most expensive schools cut corners, because they are businesses. Shit food, battered furniture, horrible beds, faded ancient duvet covers.

I wouldn’t be jealous

It was just another popularity contest. Manipulation, low level bullying. Ugh.

I remember “leftover pie”. Literally the slip off the plates from the preceding week.

Like something from The Twits

Slip = slop

In a friend of mine's very exclusive prep school that was called "rubbish pie". They had it every Friday. I remember picking mouse droppings out of my bran flakes. My mother didn't believe me.

White bread and super noodles were our staple diets. Pop tarts too.

The common rooms were grim. They stank. Horrible smelly sofas falling apart and bean bags with food marks spills on.

My parents believed they were doing the best for me. Without the distractions of home life I’d be able to get stuck into my school work.
It was what they knew, they’d boarded when they were 8yrs and thought they were being kind by leaving me til I was 12.

Never been would never send my children.

I think it's horrific.

I know you weren't asking my opinion, but the idea of boarding school appalled me as a child even though I grew up in an abusive home.

for all of you who suffered through going away to school.

We were under strict instructions not to take touring prospective parents to certain areas, including the common rooms. They looked like something you'd expect to see in a prison. Battered, smelly, broken furniture, dented and scratched old lockers, graffiti everywhere, chewing gum stuck to the walls and floor. Never cleaned. And if you were bullied (like me) you weren't allowed in them anyway, the boys would throw books and compasses at you and tell you to get the fuck out.

One of my good friends was stripped of his prefectship because he had a rebel moment and showed the common rooms to a set of prospective parents.

And this was a nice, picturesque rural boarding school set in huge grounds, it has a reputation for being progressive and nurturing.

I too never got on a seat and had to sit on the floor because I was the newest.
We also had Friday surprise (all the leftovers in one tin) disgusting.

A royal went to mine. Many years after I’d been there.

It doesn’t make any difference how elitist it is, how lovely it may appear.

There’s no love.

I caused mayhem at mine. Went back drunk once at 14 after a weekend away. Another time after a riotous weekend in London I returned with my hair sprayed pink... The headmistress was apoplectic with rage.
I got thrown into the goldfish pond once and ended up with a goldfish in my bra....
Was dared to climb the school tower which I did and scratched my initials in the brickwork.
Most memorably was the night boys broke onto the school premises. Our headmistress looked exactly like Alistair Sim in drag in St Trinians and she was tearing round the school at 1am shrieking that there was boys in her school. I had a lovely conversation with the one sitting on my bed when I woke up.
Can you see why the headmistress was delighted when I left. I was amazed she lived another 25 years....

You know 84 I have lots of those stories too. I tell them with a big laugh so does everyone who knows me. God blar you where so fearless so wild. Truth is I was utterly utterly miserable just a desperately lonely unhappy wee girl looking for anyway to get something from someone and I wasn’t really having fun while I did it. Everyone thought I was though.

84CharingCrossRoad That has to be the same school I went to!! The clock tower, the being pushed in the pond (new girl initiation) and in my day it was the deputy head who was Alistair Sim in drag - there can't possibly be two schools with all of those similarities surely?

My friend is a nurse at a top boarding school currently. She says that many of the children are desolate in their first term but all our hide it from their parents, not because the school tells them to explicitly but because they are imbued in the culture of it all.

I live in London in a neighbourhood where several families send kids to boarding school. I just don’t get it as we have access to world class day schools. Often they justify it for the sports and facilities but that seems a poor trade off for family unity. Ultimately it’s usually a class culture thing. Sending your child to boarding school is almost a status symbol for some local parents here.

I didn’t board but know lots of people who did (uni was full of ‘em) and ‘boarding school syndrome’ fits so many of them. They’re lovely people, some of my best friends, and it’s heartbreaking to think they might experience some of this misery in their private thoughts.

I find the decision to send children away just... unfathomable. The comparison to foster care really struck me. As did love being something you do for your children in lots of little moments throughout the day.

So much of this is about class, isn’t it? The English disease. That children are ‘lucky’ to have this experience and to be packed into upper-middle-class cookie moulds. Thank goodness so many of you resist the conditioning.

inseoir your posts are brilliant. And the juxtaposition with DrMorbius trenchant post made me guffaw. greensleeves you won’t recognise me but it’s lovely to see your name about the place again.

Sorry for butting in. My DP went to one of the top boarding schools in the country - one of the world famous ones - and this thread has been revelatory. He loathed it, made friends for life and is one of the best educated people i’ve ever met. People are very envious of his educational provenance and he takes a lot of flak for it, with a heroic stiff upper lip. He still gets miserable on Sunday nights and he never tells his parents anything. They seem like very nice people.

Not quite sure why it's an English thing.. Boarding schools in the UK are packed with overseas students.. Chinese, Russian, Middle Eastern and even many Europeans.

I boarded early. Hated it. Missed my parents every day until sixth form when I got used to it.

But they thought they were doing the best for me - I was more academic than my siblings and they thought I would do better if I were privately educated (I got a scholarship which paid for lots of my fees etc. but they still had to do without to pay the rest).

Because I knew how hard they worked to put me there, I never said anything about how much I disliked it. I was top of the class in everything but shy and socially inept (the worst of both worlds, as far as the other girls were concerned).

It has helped me very self-reliant. I feel at home instantly anywhere and I can put on a brave face no matter what turmoil is happening in my life. I am also sure it helped me get to Oxbridge, get a good career and live the lifestyle I now do.

My parents only found out how much I hated it years later, over a tipsy heart to heart when I said I would never send my kids to boarding school. I wish I hadn't said anything now as they had no inkling and my mum looked so sad.

I went at 10 till 16. I enjoyed it at first but by the time I turned12 my bully had arrived! I spent 4 years full time boarding with someone who made me spend every day wanting to die and self harming. My children would never ever board, ever

I made a few friends there but avoid reunions. No matter how stylish, successful and confident I feel/am now, when I see them I feel like they still see me as the gawky girl I used to be.

I would to Gah avoid anything to do with it. I wonder how many of them would feel the same though. Probably most.