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.

Lack of privacy definitely had knock on effects in my life. There were no doors that locked in the lower school (including loo doors) and pretty much only loo doors in the upper.

Bullying was rampant. I’d (male) never had a fight before going, but was forced into three in the first term alone. Black eyes were common but you didn’t tell, no matter what (because you’d be shunned and get far worse after). Pornographic mags were in every dorm in the upper school.

If you were sporty you were generally ok. If you were academic (unless also sporty) then you hid it. Homophobia and rascism were pretty rife amongst the kids. Basically if you were different in any way you’d suffer for it.

The school was seen as top of the second tier, with a very good reputation for music. I can’t comment on the music as I didn’t play anything or sing, but the academic side was very poor - lots of teachers who couldn’t “do” iyswim - I wouldn’t have rated it at all and my results reflected that.

My dh boarded from 7. Doesn't say much about 7-13 but 'loved' secondary.

I wish I had read this thread before I met him. It explains a lot. I think I too would have 'swerved public school ' men had I known.

He would send our dt's to boarding school from 11 if he could. I won't let him. Ever. Trouble is they just turned 10 so I am envisaging a battle.

He's so defensive about his time there and get SO defensive when talking about it, we never do. I believe he thinks it was the making of him and he was privileged to go there. He won't have a bad word said about it. Like it's ingrained.

His nephew went off to board last year. Aged 9. History repeated..... But apparently he was desperate to go (makes you wonder why) and is loving it.

I can remember the sick feeling listening to the charts in the car on a Sunday night on the way back... fake brightness all round......

Agreed on the charts. There are still songs (30 years later) that will trigger homesickness

There was programme on the BBC about Radley (I think) a few years ago, did anyone watch it? One man had done v well in business, lived in HK but had no partner or children - it was suggested he struggled with relationships I think. One had been top of class and cross country etc but I think he said the competitiveness led him to have poor mental health - he might have had a breakdown. Another was talking to his mum about boarding school and said he wouldn't send his kids there and the mum said oh yes, it's because you can't afford it and he was like yes that's true but we just wouldn't anyway, I wasn't very happy there and the mum just sat there. It was quite sad to watch, I suppose for all the advantages, there are a lot of negatives for a lot of people, as this thread shows.

I have never boarded but I really recognise being unable to ask for help and not showing vulnerability. I am v private and don't trust people easily. I only cried for the first time in front of a close friend after knowing her for about 3 years. I had a loving and close family, but there are things I will just not talk about. I don't know where it comes from.

Oh Christ, this thread.

Boarding school survivor here. 13-18, reasonably prestigious establishment on the South Coast, beginning of the '90s. Scholarship boy (or in other words, combined with being skinny and bespectacled, a target). Even allowing for the scholarship, my parents nearly bankrupted themselves sending me there. They are good people and believed quite sincerely they were doing the right thing for me. I dare not ever tell them how much I fucking hated it although I suspect they may well have some idea.

Was it worth it from an educational point of view? No. I'd have got just as good an education - probably better, in fact - at the local RC secondary, which is where I would have gone otherwise. The teachers - with certain honourable exceptions - were arseholes: lazy arseholes, at that. Nearly all Oxbridge-educated, but with inexplicable chips on shoulders. Some were almost certainly psychopaths who shouldn't have been allowed near young folks in any capacity. A couple were pederasts: one committed suicide a few years ago when the net was finally closing in on him. Others had severe drink problems - the headmaster was chief among them.

Laziest of the lot of them was my housemaster. We weren't allowed to lock our cupboards or (later) rooms up as "we have an atmosphere of trust in this house." As any fool would be able to tell, the immediate result of this was that anything and everything that wasn't nailed down got nicked: all this, because matey couldn't be arsed to deal with keys and suchlike. His response to complaints of theft was to say that we shouldn't have items of value in school. For context, this was in the days when your average album on CD cost about fifteen quid: I think it's uncontroversial to assert that you ought to be able to take your tunes with you to where you are living without the risk of one of the resident ne'er-do-wells lifting them and flogging them down the nearest car boot to get money for Christ knows what.

Another fun feature of this no-locks policy was that if one of the hard cases felt like working you over, they had 24h access to you, which meant that if they felt you required a beating at 3am for some reason, then that's what happened. Needless to say, if you breathed a word of it to the teachers, then you would be labelled by the teachers as lacking in moral fibre (which was of course easier than actually dealing with the matter properly), and by everyone else as a grass, with all the fun that comes with that.

Have I done better in life as a result of this experience? I don't think I have, no. Has it damaged me? Almost certainly. To what extent, I'm not sure. I have certainly never ever left anything unlocked anywhere ever since, and I have struggled massively with self-confidence.

And when I went to university, I couldn't believe how benign an environment it was. There were some positives - I made some lifelong friends out of it - but overall? No. Would not put any of my boys through it.

Sorry, that was more of an essay than I intended! TL;DR: yes, I went. No, I didn't enjoy it.

Thanks all for this thread. V difficult to talk about this part of my life with others.

Greatly appreciate hearing others stories as it helps me feel less of a freak tbh.

oh no grunkle you are not a freak, dont ever think that! (well obvs you might be coz I dont know you but you are probs not!!)

Two more memories: a 'special' evening to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with the nuns when I was 10. You were only allowed to go if you had an Irish surname or your mother was Irish (no unmarried parents in them days). If you were allowed in there were cakes and squash. My 100% Irish mother's surname wasn't Irish enough, perhaps to do with the fact my father was a filthy English prod.

And the time in Mass, when 3 teens had been killed in a car crash, 1 was CofE and the other 2 were RC. Prayers were only said for the 2 who were of the faith. I appreciate both of those are to do with religion not boarding per se - but when you are boarding those things kind of stick with you.

OP, thanks so much for posting this. I boarded from 10 as my DPs worked for the foreign office and moved country every few years. So many of the stories listed here could have been written by me.
I went in 1976 and essentially, I had no contact with my family apart from the holidays and occasional letters as It was too expensive to try and call overseas from the one payphone.

I remember one geography teacher who saw me reading a letter from home before the start of class and then grabbed it and read in out to the whole class. She made a point of mocking the bits my mother had written.
I have never for an instant considered sending my children to a boarding school

Hi grunkle - glad you're here.

I often think at secondary my brother had it harder. A 'fagging' system and totally overt actually dangerous bullying.

Complete lack of dignity or compassion - dog eat dog. Not one single tiny bit of gentleness or quietness for a single minute of your day, for months on end.

I didn't board, but my best friend of 20 years did from 8-18, so I've really appreciated you sharing your stories - it sheds some light on a part of her life that she never talks about with me. I went to one primary and one secondary (state, comprehensive), lived in the same house my whole childhood, so I really had no idea.

She would describe herself as private, fiercely independent, a coper, and she is in a lot of ways, but from the first time I met her (when she was a year out of boarding) I remember her radiating this brittle vulnerability underneath the veneer of jolly positivity, and she has had some awful relationships in her private and working life, I think as a result of her having very low expectations of other people's behaviour towards her. She has also had some very unhealthy coping mechanisms.

She seems to have healed a lot in recent years through marrying a man who understands her (he was a day boy at a boarding school, and his older brother had boarded) and raising their own children in a very different way. Both are adamant that their children will never board.

My own DS turned 8 recently, and it really baffles me how anyone could send such a very young child out into the world like that, let alone think it was somehow good for them.

For what it's worth, I went to a very ordinary state comp, but I've never envied people who boarded. I'm a very sensitive introvert and need a lot of space and privacy in order to function, so I know that I would have crumbled in that environment, even in a 'progressive' school. I feel a great deal of compassion and respect for the people on this thread who survived that environment.

Thank you MalteserHound, I really appreciate your understanding and compassion - it means a lot to me.

So often I thought that boarding was just "normal' - but the reality is that it is totally not normal - this thread has really helped me. I feel I've been acting all my life - I wish I knew who I really was!

Tiru, I think all kids/schools can be brutal, and we all learn to hide the more sensitive parts of ourselves. School was no picnic for me, I was bullied for years and felt all the pressure of being a 'square peg', and the teachers didn't really care. I certainly have different 'masks' for different situations. The difference was that I could always get away from it. I could come home at the end of the day and set down the mask, relax, and feel safe and accepted. I would guess that without that, it must be difficult over time to remember what is the mask and what is really you.

I have form for being a people pleaser (I had too much praise for being the good, quiet, clever, hardworking girl as a child, so was never able to express negative emotions and am deeply conflict avoidant). At one point I found myself very anxious and stressed, with a high status, 'respectable' life that I really didn't enjoy at all. I found short-course psychotherapy really helpful to work through some of that and figure out who I wanted to be for myself.

Gosh, some of you had terrible boarding schools. My school itself that I referred to earlier in the thread was lovely. Really good food breakfast lunch dinner and snacks and lovely house mistresses. No bullying that I remember and could shower whenever we wanted. Even though it was tough being there for a whole Year without seeing my parents, at least the boarding life was really first class. Must have been so awful living in some of the schools some of you lived in 😱

I boarded from 9 to 18. It shaped my personality and defined my family relationships. So many other comments resonate: the fact that it felt that no one cared if I was happy, that all my emotions were kept bottled up and you couldn’t admit how unhappy you were, the streak of steel and independence this grew right through my soul. I never felt like I was wanted anywhere and have always had an overwhelming desire to feel I belong. 30 years on it still feels the same. I once tried to explain to my then DH how it made me feel and he said I needed to “get over it. It was a long time ago”. So coupled with the feelings of abandonment are those of guilt that my feelings aren’t important enough to be believed. I have never been able to tell my DM how I felt, it would upset her too much and what good would it do now?
Reading this thread has had me in tears. Some of you guys have expressed ideas and feelings I thought I was alone in having and have been expressed so much more eloquently than I could have done. Thank you.

I’ve found I care less about the belonging thing since I reached mid 40s. It’s grown into a sad sort of acceptance of it being a part of me.

I’m currently devouring literature about parenting teens as I’ve no frame of reference for it.

That’s good advice MalteserHound, thank you. I’m sorry to hear you were bullied. I think being able to get away from it was what I craved more than anything, it was exhausting having to wear that resilient mask all the time. I found very hard was bedtimes. I think we all tried to copy each other, to be independent and resilient, to be seen to be coping, never letting the mask slip.

The boys in our school were called by their surnames and this made my relationship with my brothers very strange - if we passed each other in the corridor we would simply nod to acknowledge each other - nothing more was said and I never spoke to them by their first names.

I remember my mum asking us what we’d like for supper on the day before flying back to school and she would prepare each of our favorite meals - I would beg to stay at home, saying I’d be really good and I wouldn’t want any pocket money! When we got back to school we had to form a line and be weighed and measured in our vests and pants whilst the matron would call out the measurements in front of everyone - my poor brother was bullied mercilessly as he was heavier than normal for his age. I felt so protective towards him but there was nothing I could say or do - I just stayed silent. I feel sad that I didn’t do more.

My life has always been to be a “good girl”, to keep quiet and stay out of trouble and confrontation. And that’s how I tend to operate now.

tiru18 That (measuring and weighing) in vests and pants happened at day school too. I was on the skinny side of small and normal, but my best friend was v tall and overweight. Fucking Gym Teacher's Pet was responsible for recording the class's heights and weights. "Oh, M, you're not fat, you're just CUDDLY", she would smirk. FML. I remember saying to M after a weighing session: "Yes, you're overweight. But you're also my best friend, and I couldn't give a shit what you weigh."

God, I hated school.

Loving this thread, btw. I was a day school girl for 13 endless years. EX boarded from 8, and it destroyed him. DP boarded from 12, and I am starting to think (as a result of this thread) that it explains his self-containedness, elusiveness, unreachablenes, desire for privacy, and eating speed. He put the latter down to having 7 siblings, but I am now wondering.

Sorry. Should have said that DC1 is boarding. No regrets from any of us. We all love it. But I thik day and boarding schools have changed immensely...

^think

I’m sure the weighing thing did happen in day schools - and your gym teacher’s pet sounds horrible AugustaLoveday.

I suppose what I was trying to say was that I felt unable to comfort my brother due to the need to suppress my feelings. Whereas I should’ve felt that I could’ve given him some words of comfort or even a hug. That just never happened - we were pretty much strangers to each other.

What on earth were they trying to achieve by doing all that weighing and measuring in public? For image conscious preteens and teens as well?!! I know that ideas about childrearing were different 30 years ago, but there was still basic human decency. We certainly weren't subjected to anything like that after the age of 11 at secondary school, once people's bodies had started to change. In fact I remember one girl at my primary developed breasts very young, and was given special permission to wear a T-shirt for PE, rather than the knickers and vest that the rest of us stripped down to.

The whole lack of privacy and (at best) lack of consideration of feelings sounds hideous, and I feel sick just imagining it.

I was never especially close to my sister growing up, but the thought of not being able to offer a hug/ defend her when she was upset (unless it was me that had caused it ) is very sad.