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.

Dp went to boarding school from just turned 7 to 18.

Whilst he says he loved boarding school he does have a problem with family life.
He cannot cope with day to day tiffs or just being able to go anywhere or do anything at short notice.
He cannot see that there is anything wrong.
Unless something is planned in advance, written in a diary then it doesn't happen.

He is great at work. Up at 4.30 to get to work by 7am, rarely back before 8pm. Works away 1-2 weeks per month.

If he isn't at work it is like he is just treading water until he can get to work.

Malteser, thank you. You’ve explained something.

One of the people I love best called me brittle. I have wondered why ever since. You have explained it. I think that person hated school, a day school, too, and I’m not sure had an entirely happy home life but I would say developed inner resilience sooner than I did. I still catch myself looking for hostile intent, it drives my family mad, but say fine, cut the conversation close, ask about others. I suppose I’m terrified that if I let my guard down beyond the bits I am prepared to share, I will disintegrate. But I do a darned good act of appearing very open, amusing, wise etc.

I’m saying this in case it helps others too.

Thank you.

This thread is so sad. I went to my local comp and read lots of enid blyton so for me boarding was a whole different world of midnight feasts, fun with friends and lacrosse sticks.
I remember when I got to university meeting boarding school people for the first time. One evening a group of us were out and I got talking to an ex boarder. I mentioned about horrible school dinners at my school.
He said oh mine too were awful. I replied not in an arsy way but more drunkenly 'but you went to a posh boarding school weren't your dinners all delicious?'

he replied no way. Then he asked me if every evening my mum made me a home cooked dinner. And I replied in fact yes she did.

This opened the flood gates for him and he spent ages telling me about how awful the whole thing was. Could I imagine having to eat at my school the whole time, never kust relaxing at home? I kept saying but it's supposed to be so privileged and it's so expensive. He told me they cut corners with costs, they didn't care about him and he hated it the whole time. It was quite an eye opener. I'm so sorry for everyone who had a horrible experience.

Oh yes, the eating speed. It took years for DW to train me out of it. It's taken decades to get rid of the rage and cruelty. DD remarked that her friends regard me as the scariest parent of their acquaintance. Something to do with the face and the voice.

Those of us who went to boarding school were regarded as super scary, I now realise, at work, unless we reinvented themselves. It’s something about an impersonal almost inhuman approach, an ability not to show anger superficially but make it apparent that there is, not a volcano, but an abyss of ice into which the culprit - and I use that word deliberately - has fallen of his or her own volition, whether intentionally not. Very little needs be said, a few choice words will do the job. Ordinary emotions are repressed.

Thanks for this thread.

I boarded f/t from 11 to 17 in two schools, neither of which saw it as their duty to provide any emotional nurturing at all. I went for years not being touched by anyone as a child for most of the year, except during the holidays when my mum was very loving and affectionate.

I’m ok luckily. I felt worthless as a teen and young woman, while at the same time somehow thinking I was special. I’m neither. I’m very loving to my children and DH but am fucking useless at parenting teens because I wasn’t really parented for most of this time in my life. I’m learning lots from DH who is a well of patience, maturity and good humour. I just feel exasperated, overwhelmed and childlike with my kids which is weird because I was a happy and confident parent when they were little.

Has anyone else been experiencing waves of bleakness since participating in this thread? I have. I wanted dh to hold me all last night, I felt that old starvation of affection and bone-deep coldness again. I don't think it's a bad thing, I think the thread is really valuable and we should be facing these feelings, but I'm taken aback by how much permafrost I still have in my core after all these years.

Greensleeves - I'm with you. Had a cry to DP about some boarding related things last night.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by it all but we must keep in perspective that we aren't those children anymore. We are going to do better by our kids.

Doesn't make it easier when you're in the thick of it of course. Hugs to all here x

Grunkle

Yes, I'm regularly in tears when I read this thread. Feel like I have reverted a bit - proper uncontrollable childlike crying. (In private, of course...)

so many revelations and similarities

My ds also described me as 'scary' to others although he knows otherwise he says that is how i come across.

He also says I am 'like a robot' when he is very upset with me

Also at work I am completely guarded and cannot socialise, just have to keep busy, doing doing doing.

This thread is so sad
Maybe not the right person to comment on this thread as it's not something I've ever experienced (even though I used to love the sound of boarding school/midnight feasts as I read far too much Malory Towers and St Clares!)
Makes sense though that as adults so many people will feel detached from their parents as they were sent away from them from such a young age. They didn't grow up with them, or have them caring for them,after all.
I can't imagine doing it. Never. So small, having to bottle up emotions.....
You need someone in a loving capacity there for you and actual relationships, otherwise it'll be hard when you're older if you've never had a family to grow up in.

This thread has really helped me. I’ve too blubbed a bit (in private too!)

mini - yy to feeling somehow worthless and special at the same time

In fact, many many internal dichotomies - which is one of the reasons it makes examining it and discussing it so hard

I can really identify with the poster who said that up to the age of 11 she had no problem raising her DC but because she was sent away to boarding school at 11 she had no experience of family from 11-18.
Dp was sent to boarding school within days of turning 7.
He did not return to the family until he was 19. Left again at 22.
He hasn't a clue about parenting DC . There was talk of boarding school but that was quickly dismissed by me.

The sad thing is dp loved his time at boarding school but doesn't see the wreckage it has produced.

He really cannot get his head round playing with his children.

He has no experience to draw on

Hey Taffeta 🤜🏼 (That’s a fistbump if you’re wondering).

I’ve been mulling on this thread more.

My older sister - bright, sensitive, artistic, possibly on the spectrum, was sent to a girls’ boarding school in 1974 and the rest of us (Mum, dad, me and younger brother) went to live in Thailand. She was 11 and one of the youngest girls in the school. She was also slightly chubby with afro hair. She was sent to Coventry by the rest of the girls who found her ‘different’ and nobody talked to her for a whole term. My mum has told us several times how, when my sister came home for the holidays she was dirty and her hair was matted. 😔

And yet she still sent her back although sister begged and begged them not to.

My sister was a victim of institutional neglect.

After a couple of years my parents took her out of the school and she went to a day school with us in Thailand but I think the damage was done by then.

She’s 54 and has never married or had children. She has been in one relationship for 18 years with a selfish man who refused to live with her or have children with her. She left him to live with someone who promised her marriage and children but ended up beating her and dragging her down into his alcoholic he’ll. She lost her home and her career and ended up a raging alcoholic, homeless, jobless and broke at the age of 46. To her huge credit she has got her life back since leaving him, has a good job and no longer drinks.

I said to my mum once that I felt my sister’s alcoholism and low self esteem might be linked to the trauma she experienced at boarding school. My mum was furious with me and accused me of trying to make her feel guilty about things she couldn’t change because they were in the past. My sister has never had any therapy.

I think I survived boarding school by simply mentally absenting myself through fiction for almost my entire teens. I spent ages 11 - 13 in Narnia, 14 - 15 in Jalna, and 15 onwards obsessively reading feminist authors.

Thanks you CS Lewis, Jean Plaidy, Mazo De La Roche, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter and Charlotte Bronte for keeping me from harm. I hardly remember anything that happened between the ages of 11 and 17 except what was in the pages of a book.

It makes me so sad reading this thread and seeing how many of you had awful experiences at boarding school.

I was a boarder from age 10-18 and have lots of happy memories of my schooldays. We had very caring staff in our boarding house and I remember it as a time of lots of fun. I don't recall feeling homesick or detached from my parents although as an only child, I was probably pretty independent but I was always very close to my mother. It was quite a forward thinking school in many ways and I was also allowed to take a pony with me as there was an equestrian centre so caring for those and riding took up a lot of my time which I absolutely loved.

There was a very good documentary a few years ago - Leaving Home at 8 (cutting edge) I boarded from 11. Mixed experience although in the end very happy. I went through the same feelings when my child reached the age I was when I went away. I watched this documentary when it came out, which was a while ago. I watched it on my own, and from behind a cushion and shouted at the telly a lot. I’m not sure if it would help you to watch it, reading this thread feels a bit like watching it all over again!

I had to go away from this thread for a while... brought up lots of emotions and gave me that bleak, Sunday night feeling. I do think it is cathartic and valuable for all of us and really important that we share and validate (god I hate that word!) what happened to us.

I suppose what I want to say is that I am still a reasonably normal functioning adult, albeit - like everyone - with my flaws. Boarding school was not all bad, but equally thank god it was never ever ever something I would have inflicted on my own DC.

I also spent my secondary school years at a girls boarding school.
At the time I was deeply hurt by my parents action of sending me away to school. I can honestly say that when I was at school no adults took any personal interest in me as an individual and definitely never showed you any love, we were all quite terrified of the matron!
Contact with my family was minimal,just stilted letters and no phone calls.
I do feel that the experience of boarding has impacted on my life in a negative way.
Yes as others have said already, it does give you the ability to be fiercely independent and able to cope in any situation outwardly but deep down I sometimes think I don't really know who I am as a person.
I do however like my own company but completely dislike being in large groups of people.
I would very much hope that for children now who have no alternative but to go to a boarding school, that the pastoral care is more enlightened than my experience.

It saddens me to think of how much normal family life I missed out on when growing up

My ten year old likes being tucked up in bed on a night and a kiss. Tonight's was all the more meaningful as had this thread in mind....

Dreamy, it's these little nuts and bolts of parenting that scaffold children's growing self-esteem and build real resilience, not the brittle exoskeleton that many of us have developed that mimics resilience but comes with a whole raft of limitations and emotional problems.

My boys are 13 and 15 now and every night they come to me for a kiss, cuddle and emotional check-up, then they go up to bed, and dh follows them up, tucks them in and does the "goodnight sleep tight, don't let the bugs bite" routine he's done since they were babies.

I still maintain: love is something you do, not something you say. You do it every day, in a thousand little ways.

I've just found this thread so haven't read it all the way through yet, but it's provoking tears already. I boarded from 10 till 17 too and am only just coming to terms with the impact it's had on who I am now, nearly 40 years later.

I suppose there's no way of knowing if I'd be better off had I not gone to the school I went to, but I feel very strongly that it wasn't the right place for me.

DP boarded too, and has very fond memories of his time at school. He wondered out loud a few months ago whether we should look into boarding for our DCs and I completely fell apart at the mere thought of it. So that's a no then! I know why my parents did it but there's no way on earth I'd have that for my children.

This thread was something I started reading in an idle way but... even though I only boarded from 14-18, the school itself was a great deal nicer/more caring than the one I'd been at before and there were good reasons for me boarding (very tricky sibling situation emerging at home), a number of things have really hit home.

I'm terrible at relationships. I'm great at being friends with people, but find real intimacy very difficult partly because I'm so self-contained and very resilient, loathe asking for help or putting myself in a vulnerable position. A professional once said that they'd never met someone with a lower sense of trust than me . And I eat really fast.

The three contemporaries I know who went to boarding school (most of my adult friends haven't, I don't move in those circles these days) have also struggled with meaningful, long-term relationships although this may be because I feel I connect with them on some level - I know many of my school friends have had families... This thread has been really eye-opening, so many awful stories.

I boarded too from 11-16. 5 years of my life which I have barely talked about since. I left with no friends, a severe eating disorder, and depressed. Oh and a posh accent. The school I was at was terrible.

I don’t know anyone of my generation who boarded so can’t understand why parents would choose that option. If one of the parents were in the forces or had a job abroad, why didn’t the other parent remain at home so they could parent their DC’s and the DC’s go to a local day school?