Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

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

481 replies

OhGood · 05/02/2018 11:38

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.

OP posts:
AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:37

Greensleeves - I really, really don't want to de-reail a nice, supportive thread. DC4 knows that I love him beyond all reason. I told him as much before we fell about about the early train. I also, which I shouldn't have done, gave him ways to explain why he was on the wrong train.

Yolo - I'm sorry to say that I will sleep fine. I have tried to ring pesky Boarder three times, but his phone is, typically, switched off. He has money to get a taxi from a sort of localish station to school (I always give him money for this, as I fear he would be a target - especially as he is a numpty, and carts his stuff around in a school PE bag, with the name and logo clearly visible, which potentially makes him a target). Obviously he is my beloved DS, but I know him well enough to know that he won't ring unless there is a problem, and his housemaster and mistress will be on the phone sharpish if he doesn't appear....

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:40

PS Have had Words with the Boarder re "retarded" (and other choice expressions, which I find repellent...)

Greensleeves · 18/02/2018 21:40

As has been said before, love is something you do every day, by actively parenting your child, not something you say before you pack them off to be brought up elsewhere.

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:42

Completely understand why you say this, Greensleeves. And I can barely begin to imagine the shit some of the posters on here have been through. I think boarding from 6 (wtf?) was a major reason my XH was unable to parent properly. I refused to let any of mine board when they were little. But for my particular child, it works. In spades.

yolofish · 18/02/2018 21:42

"boarding school kids are fed a message that they are better than everyone else - it's part of the process of developing the veneer that increases their chances of achieving material success."

THIS. THIS. THIS. along with love being what you do rather than what you pay for, or what you send in the post, or what japes you have in the hols or exeats (sorry that was sarky but have had wine)

yolofish · 18/02/2018 21:45

DD2 is on a train on the way back to uni - I wont go to bed til I know she's arrived safely. I'm 100% sure she will be absolutely fine because she's not an idiot (although she is very hungover!) but it's a part of my love for her - and of course no house master at uni. And she knows that I will wait to hear she's got back safely and she likes that.

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:45

Yolo. Honestly. I love my DSC4 more than I can begin to say. He surely knows this. I lived and breathed with him for 6 years before he started school. I still do now. But he's a boarder. It works for all of us. He knows I love him more than anything on the planet (apart from the other DC, obvs).

Greensleeves · 18/02/2018 21:45

It's a damaging myth that teenagers need less parenting/personal attention/physical affection and daily parental love than younger children. My most desperate years of boarding were between 13 and 16. I felt so starved of love and affection it made me ill. I went to a small, progressive country school with a reputation for excellent pastoral care, nurturing the whole child etc. But it wasn't love.

I looked confident enough, though. I got straight As in my A Levels and went to Oxford. I suppose the lifelong emotional damage is a small price to pay Hmm

yolofish · 18/02/2018 21:47

alice I'm sorry if I'm coming across as criticising you, I don't mean to do that.

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:47

^Agree with Greensleeves. Teenagers are just as needy as toddlers. I have teenagers at day schools. But I still think boarding is good for DC4.

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:48

Yolo - absolutely no criticism taken. I'm very conscious that this is a support thread for people who had rotten experiences (my DF and XH included), and am anxious not to derail it...

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 21:49

DC4 is STILL not answering his phone, so I can only assume he is back safely as he would surely let me know otherwise...

yolofish · 18/02/2018 21:51

thank you alice.

greensleeves get you!!! Brilliant results. I got a B, a D and an O (ie a fail) and went to secretarial college... but in those days that was a route to a career and the boarding school veneer came in very useful at times (albeit at a cost).

Greensleeves · 18/02/2018 21:51

You're not derailing it, you're actually being very gracious in the face of posts which clearly question the choices you've made for your child.

But those of us who have been through the boarding system - and it hasn't changed that much, at all, apart from the window dressing, it's still outsourcing children's daily upbringing to people who don't love them - I doubt any number of "my dc loves it" anecdotes are going to change our belief that it is damaging. Many posters on this thread would have told their parents they loved it. They're still damaged.

DreamyMcDreamy · 18/02/2018 22:05

I can't fault it pastorally (v important, this), or educationally. We all love it

You would say that though, wouldn't you? You wouldn't want to think they were unhappy.This thread just shows that there's loads out there who felt abandoned, have emotional issues as now adults as a result of never having parents around or anyone to lean emotionally on at a tiny age but they've said they'd never admit it to their parents for fear of upsetting them.
You say the care is great. Do they get a kiss goodnight, or have anyone there who loves them? Each to their own, but it must do a lot of emotional damage to be sent to live away from home at such a young age.
It's like expensive,private children's homes really.
If you have no choice such as away with military or something, fair enough, but I can't understand sending your child away to live somewhere else when you don't need to.

Southwestten · 18/02/2018 22:20

sorry that was sarky but have had wine

Yes that's evident yolofish. If you don't want your children growing up damaged I'd cut back on your alcohol intake.

spiney · 18/02/2018 22:28

"boarding school kids are fed a message that they are better than everyone else - it's part of the process of developing the veneer that increases their chances of achieving material success."

Actually I don't think we were fed this message. I think we fed it to ourselves as we really didn't feel very special at all. I think it was a self protection thing.

Taffeta · 18/02/2018 22:35

We were certainly fed the superior beings shit at the boarding school I went to

I was absolutely terrified of going into my local town during the holidays, was utterly convinced I’d be beaten up by the oiks

Turned out the oiks were way nicer people than those at boarding school

My experiences have taught me never, ever to judge someone by the way they look or speak. Appreances can be very deceptive

Greensleeves · 18/02/2018 22:38

I think one of the most fucked-up legacies of a boarding school upbringing education is the cognitive dissonance of being taught that you were, as a public person in society, of the upper echelons and entitled - in fact obliged - to act accordingly, while simultaneously receiving the message that on a personal level you were worthless, a cog in a machine, unloved and unloveable.

DisgraceToTheYChromosome · 18/02/2018 22:44

Yeah, and then you add Catholicism...even more special, even more worthless. The suicidal drinking is a bonus.

Greensleeves · 18/02/2018 22:47

Catholicism isn't a great mixer for any kind of bad childhood Grin

StrumpersPlunkett · 18/02/2018 23:08

I have just read this thread with knots in my tummy.
I boarded from 7-18. Two different schools
In the late 70’s and 80’s boarding was a very very different creature from today.

As for the comment about us feeling that we are better than everyone else the overwhelming feeling I came away with was that other people’s needs feelings etc are far more important than mine.
My dads need to work is more important so I can’t live at home
Mums busy having a dinner party so she can’t hear me crying on the phone
Housemistress has 60 other girls to look after so she can’t spend some time helping me with first period/homework/friend troubles/other problems.
My needs at the bottom of the list.
I am actively parenting differently. I have had 3 years of therapy. I have ptsd as I was raped during my time at school I told one very young and inexperienced teacher who told me god would help me understand why at some point and so I told no one else.

Being independent is not always helpful.

Anyways bizarrely in praise of modern boarding. I was isolated from my family. My friend whose children boards are on skype straight after lessons each day talking about their day. They Skype goodnight. They see each other every few weekends and the school they are at is a specialist school that they chose to attend. For now. It looks as positive as it possibly could be.

OrlandaFuriosa · 18/02/2018 23:08

As I've said before, at secondary both DH and I loathed it. But a cousin was so unhappy at home that school was a relief, day school would not have been. And our DC considered it for similar reasons.

I also think if you know you are loved to the gunnels, you know why you’re there ( eg 9 schools by the age of 9) , whilst you still ache for home you understand more.

And I think it can depend on the child. Some thrive, some not. One friend decided his would do best being day but being in the school from assembly to after supper, most but not all of the weekend. School accommodating, child happy.

AliceWhiting · 18/02/2018 23:10

Greeny, that is very kind of you. I thought endlessly about sending DC4 to boarding school. I only know that he hated prep school, and that he was fortunate enough to obtain a scholarship to a stupendously good school, which he loves to bits (he has just sent me an iMessage to say, verbatim, "I am still alive and am safely back", which is all I need to know).

I am not sure what to think, really. I have other DC at home, and we don't do the goodnight kisses etc, which I now feel a bit bad about (had assumed this is because we don't really do declarations/cuddles etc). I hope my DC know that I love them more than anything in several universes. I am sure they do, even the Boarder, who tolerated a hug before he went off on his 300-mile odyssey...

pallisers · 18/02/2018 23:13

I think a 16 year old at boarding school is a radically different proposition than a 7 or 10 or 12 year old and isn't really comparable.

Swipe left for the next trending thread