How do you justify seding your child to boarding school?

[sunshine75]

I've read some pretty horrific things lately about boarding schools and the damage they can cause. See this article from the Guardian.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/20/damage-boarding-school-sexual-abuse-children

However, I have no personal experience of one and have no close friends who went to one. Therefore, I don't want to be hasty in forming a negative opinion about them.

So, if you chose to send your child to a boarding school then I'm curious as to why you chose to? For example, why did you chose boarding over a really good day school? Is there anyone who chose a boarding school for a much younger child and was this a really hard thing to do?

Yeah, well. Minifingers is the anti boarding equivalent of whoever was posting along the lines of "boarders learn so many skills that day pupils don't and are so much better equipped to deal with life's problems and the world of work. And they are protected from their parent's obsessive micromanaging" Both extreme views that are best taken with a pinch of salt.

Hakluyt - I agree that it's theoretically interesting. Has there been no research at all on the long term outcomes for children who have been at boarding school? E.g. in terms of future relationships, attachment styles, personality. I appreciate that any reasonably long term study will be looking at a cohort whose boarding experience was somewhat different to today, but I still think it would be interesting.

I definitely do have some quite deep seated problems with attachment, though in my case I think my boarding experience (feeling happier and more secure at school and never missing home) was a symptom of that rather than a cause. I have had to work very hard and face a lot of distress in order to form a strong relationship first with DH and then with DS, and that may well be true with the baby I'm expecting now too.

Personally if I was considering boarding I would be much more concerned about alcohol/drugs/sexual behaviour between pupils/bullying etc than abuse by staff. Not because the latter is not horrific but because at least some encounter with the former seems to me to be likely to the point of inevitability for a teenager at boarding school.

Happy it is my experience true, but I'm wondering why it was so different for all of us who went and my siblings.

It's just when we go into endless pillow fights and children are communal and love to live with their friends you've lost me. Not just me, but all my friends. We weren't all hopeless or failing to adjust, we preferred to be at home and I'd say that is normal and not unusual.

I'm really not judging people's decisions however, I think my parents made the right decision. But I think it's not odd to want to be at home when young.

I believe you when you say that your dc are happy to go btw. So it's not that.

Marsha,

I am, by nature, an introvert - in the 'classic' sense that my energy comes from within myself, and I find being with other people saps my energy because, for me, it is a 'not preferred / un-natural' state. If you met me, I would come across as entirely sociable, indeed quite outspoken, but I NEED to be alone after such encounters in order to recover.

I wouldn't 'love to live with my frineds', and didn't, as a boarder. I can cope with it, but one of my most pleasurable memories of school is of being in my final year and finally getting a room on my own.

I wonder whether it is such 'fundamentals of personality', for want of a better expression, that influence 'suitability for boarding'?

Hak - I'm not extreme. I know some children settle and do well and are happy at boarding school.

This is also true of some children in care, and children who were evacuated during the war.

I also believe that the majority of people who work in ALL institutions are decent and caring human beings.

I just feel very strongly that the optimal environment for strong attachment and healthy emotional growth is the family - when that family is loving and stable, as I suspect most families are who send children to boarding school.

There is such broad agreement among social work professionals and mental health professionals working with children that the family is always the best place to nurture children (in the absence of neglect and abuse) and yet this is utterly disregarded by pretty much every single person who has a financial interest in keeping boarding schools open or in using their services. There's almost no acknowledgement or discussion of this issue, or interest in the evidence (what little there is) among that group as far as I can see.

And yes - I do have strong feelings about this because I suppose I'm still in many way seeing it through a child's eye rather than as a parent. There is something absolutely fundamental and inescapably meaningful to me about the act of physically putting a distance between yourself and your school age children for days, weeks, months, years of their childhood. I can't get around that one single fact.

Me too teacher my own room in year 11 was fantastic. And by that time I had released myself from the overbearing grip of boarding school friendships and hung around with the day students. By then I was having a great time but I was 16, so old in school terms.

I also found the lack of privacy at boarding school psychologically challenging.

I had to share my sleeping, living and bathroom space with people who made me anxious, people I didn't like and who didn't like me. I wasn't unpopular but I wasn't particularly well liked either. I never felt like I could switch off and I think I went through my early teens in a state of hyper vigilance.

And no, my parents had absolutely no idea of what was going on in my head. I'm not sure I could have articulated it - feelings of unease, quite high levels of stress and anxiety which I assumed everyone else was feeling as well.

Marsha I don't know how old you are or what school you went too, but boarding has changed enormously even in the 10 years we've been doing it. You and you're sisters can't relate to communal living I can understand and in fact even relate to that and I was talking to a child who was boarding only a few weeks ago who also can't relate to it and in fact is now leaving his boarding school after a year having genuinely tried to make it work but some can. I was talking to another child last term who was deciding whether or not to leave his boarding school and go to a day school or stay, he decided to stay because of his friends and the communal living I talk about. Both come from normal happy families. I believe it's about personality, the quality, attitudes and values of the individual school and the most importantly the individual house staff (something you can't always control of course) some house staff may work well with one type of child with other children it doesn't work, and I'm going to stick my neck out and put it on the block and say how good and strong the relationship is with your parents can contribute. I have an exceedingly strong open relationship with my DS2 for a whole variety of reasons, other children don't (I'm bit saying you do or don't) but I frequently listen to parents talking at my DS's school and watch their children talking to them and watch how they behave we're not all the same, we all patent differently. I frankly think having a very strong relationship helps this a great deal.
What amazes me is that so many can't see that as so very complex animals we all respond differently to the same situation. I wasted 40 years of my life around horses, it's widely accepted that horses, who God knows are complicated are not remotely in the same league as Homo sapiens, respond differently to different situation and thus require individual approaches but many on here seem to think that when it comes to children because it wouldn't or didn't work for them and their DC's then it's won't be right for any others and that they know better than the parents or even the children themselves. I just find this bizarre.

Why is it offensive Maryz?

Both children in care and boarders are ostensibly there for their benefit and no one else's.

They live communally with other children and house parents.

The main difference is that children in care are there because their parents can't cope - through illness, addiction etc.

But they are living communally away from the family and they are cared for by paid staff just like children at boarding school.

I'd say we came from a normal happy family as did pretty much all my friends. I had nice friends in boarding, but appreciated it when the split between day and boarding wasn't so great.

It did get markedly better as you got older. More freedom, more food(!), more space, less compulsory stuff like Saturday morning sport or chapel, our own cars. And no homesickness. It was good then.

Hi again Lottie... Daniel died in 2012 aged 4, after abuse which included being less than half his "normal "weight , bruised and starving hungry and this was not reported by his teachers or other agencies. This is not saying that this would happen in all schools but seeking to change the law to make it mandatory to report abuse in school, would help make all children safer..
You say that in boarding schools that suspected abuse be handled "appropriately and immediately." Clearly some schools would always do this ..as you say the school you work would do .. but it is also true that some schools define that as "dealing with" it internally, within the school, and do not report it to an outside authority.
As a parent I feel you have the right to know exactly how the school you are sending your child to, deals with any (albeit unlikely) abuse that takes place.

Lottie Daniel Pelka was emaciated and seen by teachers scavenging from school bins but they did not have any legal obligation to report their suspicions to SS /police. In the case of child abuse/neglect suspicion is all that is required for an investigation to be launched no hard evidence is required. Victoria Climbe was seen on numerous occasions by doctors nurses social workers church workers etc all were suspicious although no one had hard evidence but none reported it or followed up their suspicions choosing to believe the parents or frankly walk away, if one had then the outcome might have been different. Peter Connolly was seen by a paediatrician the day before he died again she failed to act on her suspicions.
Suspicion of child abuse is enough, the law needs to be changed to save children's lives, sadly really because as a society it should be our moral duty to protect children. As Victoria Climbe's mother said this would never of happened in her country (the Ivory Coast) because your neighbours would have done something.

I accept Marsha that it's wasn't great for you why can't you accept the opposite?
Do you think I'm lying when I say what I see occurs all the time at my DS's boarding school or perhaps I'm deluding myself or do you think my DS feels he can't be honest with me or I'm unable to see that he's unhappy?

Ah Mini your back you stated a few days ago that staff in care homes are better qualified that those in boarding school for the third now of asking where is the evidence for this?

No not at all. Which is why is prefer not to focus on me or your ds for a moment. I think your ds is happy as I said.

I wasn't out of the ordinary, I didn't have an unusually bad time, how I felt was how the majority felt.

So I post here because I'm surprised that the collective experience - children age 12 and younger skipping off to boarding school doesn't tally with what I saw at the school gates as children trailed in with their duvets. A nice school, not unusual in any way. We all grew out of it though.

Thanks Happygardening... sadly some professionals who have legal obligations to report do not do so ... Daniel Pelka and Victoria Climby before him, were both seen in hospitals ... Changing the law would mean giving a legal voice not only to those in positions of authority but also to those in daily contact, who really know the child... and would mean that they would have to be heard...

Mini I'm a professional who works with children in both sectors (I'm not a teacher) and I also have numerous colleagues there is not a general broad agreement amongst social work professionals, mental health care works paediatricians psychiatrists therapists nurses or anyone else for that matter that boarding is bad, in fact from talking to my colleagues in MH they definitely don't take this view. We have moved on the general consensus is what works for the individual child. We all agree that in the ideal world a child needs a happy loving family behind them but not that boarding is bad.

Happygardening. I may have misread you- but I certainly got the suggestion from your last post that people who don't like the idea of boarding might not have such a strong relationship with their children as those that do.......you didn't say that, did you?

Marsha as I've said it depends and I think we're in agreement about it depends very much on the individual child/family and as importantly school and staff.

Whilst driving the DC who is a day pupil but is considering boarding (so a real dilemma again for us) we have discussed the disadvantages of not being at home. DC said 'nothing can replace being at home with parents but that does n't stop you wanting to go away for the experiences and fun of trips and boarding'.
That is from some one who made a pro active decision initial to stay at home and is extremely home loving and has seen other DC go through homesickness and us go through child sickness.

No not what I was rather clumsily trying to suggest but I do suspect and have seen from my general observations that children who really thrive in boarding schools have very strong relationships with their parents and families or absolutely crap ones!

"mental health care works paediatricians psychiatrists therapists nurses or anyone else for that matter that boarding is bad"

No - I didn't say there was agreement that boarding school is bad. I said there is agreement that the family is the best place to raise children, which is why such strong efforts are made to keep children out of care.