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?

I have never said independent means isn't home sick, the independence I'm talking about is much more physical, packing suit cases changing beds etc, and I also agree saying a meal with a teenager isn't micro managing them.
At the end of the day it's down to personal choice, which of course those with the kind of money that means you can afford large boarding fees have more of than others. We as parents all make decisions that others might not agree with, but as parents we know our children best, our circumstances and what is on offer to our individual children. Even the anti boarding brigade need to accept that we truly care about our children and most parents with children at boarding school monitor their children's welfare very stringently and are likely to pull them out if they are concerned that there is an on going unhappiness. Most children emerge from boarding schools having had a time of their lives, had opportunities not available to them if they were in a day school, learnt to live work eat sleep and play along side a wide variety of personalities and increasingly nationalities. All I know have emerged confident independents and usually well rounded but also with a very strong relationship with their immediate families.
What boarding can't do however hard the staff try is mend broken relationships between child and parent, stop acrimonious divorces, make those few parents who really don't care about their children care, or make poor parents into good parents.

dreamgirls of course you can.

I was simply saying how evenings went in our house, to show what level of micromanaging goes on......

I do find this is a regular refrain though, amongst the parents of termly boarders...that other parents micro manage, and they are just sooooo chilled donchya know .

And then you realise that the things they consider to be micromanaging, the vast majority of parents around the world consider perfectly normal.

It does make me chuckle to think they trully believe that only about 1% of all children are not micro managed, are independent, are ready for university, appreciate their homelife...and that the other 99% are wasting their time with, you know, cooking tea and answering homework questions. So unneccessary!!!!

"In a day school a I think the material difference would be a lot more evident"
I was talking to my DS yesterday about school and he was saying one of the boys likes to spend ridiculously large sums of money on things and that the other boys don't like it. This is in a school where the majority of parents are known to be exceedingly wealthy.
Ours all have debit cards because cash is discouraged but we're only meant to give then about £35 a term.

Maryz, absolutely gree with the levelling thing. As a 100% scholarship child (I remained at boarding school even when my dad lost his job and there was no money coming in, because it was cheaper to send me there than feed me at home) I really appreciated the fact that nobody could see ] the vast gulf that existed between my family circumstances and those of the majority of children at the school.

Summerends, I absolutely agree that the decision to board, or not, is part of a balance. In my parents' case, the balance was suitable education + board, or potentially unsuitable education and stay at home. I understood, and still understand, that balance. We have made active choices in terms of where we live to avoid that specific 'academic' balance. Even so, I can see that we COULD have been driven down the boarding route by DD (a dancer) had she set her heart on a dance career. Luckily, we have an exceptionally good local dance school, which she can combine with attending a school where she can fulfil her full academic potential (she's a year 6 all level 6s type of girl), but we know and she knows that that has closed the door to her becoming a professional ballerina.

Thewordfactory, I don't think it's only boarders that have these qualities. It's more that I think boarding is one reasonable way of achieving these things amongst others. All perfectly legitimate choices depending on individual families circumstances.

Re child sickness.
After 10 years of boarding. I can quite honestly say it's never passed. I think about him every day and in the four or five days running up to an exeat/holiday I get so excited that he's "coming home" of course the summer holidays are the best (9 weeks this year) I start getting excited about two weeks before he breaks up.
Like so many things it's a balance between what we want and what is the best option.

Parents being childsick - I know I will be when DS starts part boarding next term, even though he will not be far away. Funnily enough, I know he will be homesick too - but he is the one who has chosen to start boarding.

The DC's new head had the humbling experience of sending his own DS ahead of him to the school (made sense to avoid changing schools twice) and he was honest and open enough to admit that after a career spent working in boarding schools, he now finally understands what parents are making such a fuss about .

So what do people mean when they say that boarding school makes them independent?

I completely agree with the benefits of chatty communal meals with parents and siblings and of course that is not micromanaging.
Sorry if I am repeating other points made by others but we more than catch up with that communal time during the holidays, weekend leaves etc and make more of an effort to make sure that we have time for that instead of the hectic activity of term time activities and work.
DS also gets the benefit of easy prolonged socialisation with his friends.
We also have DC at day school and there is no difference in our relationship with them and they are very normal, comfortable with each other (which is something else I was wary of having been conscious of that with my siblings).

What sort of things do they have to do for themselves that day kids don't?

I know by the time I was boarding I was far more homesick that the reverse. I think they felt it with the first child, but it got markedly easier I imagine to send us all back after the holidays by the time we were all there.

And I wasn't that young for a boarder, but it really comes down to I just want to be at home, which is fair enough for a child.

I do feel surprised that children don't get homesick. But it sounds like some don't.

Managing toiletries is a good one! Snacks/sweets/money also good, although obv that depends a bit on the family and how much independence they give their teen.

Independence around routines - managing their time within the school structure where there is likely to be more choice than what goes on in the average home.

Managing friendships and interactions with other people, the minutiae of a life lived with 40-50 others instead of 4-6.

Taking on positions of responsibility within the house, perhaps mentoring younger pupils.

To be clear I'm not saying you can't learn independence without boarding, but it is one way of doing it, in what is in reality a safe and structured space.

Marsha - were you homesick all/most of the time? I ask because DS gets horribly homesick when away, but only at bedtime - the rest of the time he is absolutely fine. So far he has chosen to do things inspite of knowing this will happen, because the positive stuff outweighs it, but we have serious decision time looming on full boarding or not....

I may be being thick, lottiedouble-but I don't see anything there that my day school teens don't do. Apart from learning how to live with 40 other people, which is, you must admit, a pretty niche skill!

With regards to home sickness, I think most children would suffer at first.

Only those with poor attachment to their home, wouldn't?

This is one reason why boarding schools keep DC so busy, especially in those early weeks/months. And why they sometime slimit contact home. It's to break that feeling.

It certainly seems to work for most DC I know. They don't get remotely home sick by the end of the first year.

I supoose from my perspective, though, I'd wonder if it's wise to break a perfectly natural protective mechanism in children. Isn't this something that just naturally disipates over time? Why the rush?

I'm always stunned how mollycoddled and dependent children are even teenagers and after 30 years it seems to be getting worse not better. Work colleagues often talk about the kind of help they're giving their DC's and are on asking me what I do are amazed I don't do half the things they describe. Much of what lottie describes DS2 was happily doing at 10 not as a teenagers.
It reminds me of my DS2 travelling home from friends he needed to come home from a friends house by train he was 10 he'd rarely travelled on a train and never travelled on a train before on his own or done this particular journey we'd just moved, my DH met him in London and put him on the train and I met him at the other end. He was stunned that so many people stopped and asked him where his parents were, and were shocked to find he was travelling alone, they asked if he was scared? To which he replied why should he be? How did he know when to get off he said he could read the station signs and listen to the announcements? What would he do if I wasn't there to meet him? He had a mobile and we'd clearly told him what to do? Was he lonely? No especially as about 20 people had already asked him the same questions. Was he bored? No he was tryingto listen to an audiobook. Did he need them to tell him when to get off and which side to get off? No he thought he could probably work that one out for himself. Why was he in first class in fact were children alone allowed in first class? To which he replied he only liked travelling first class he'd paid to upgrade from his own money! Could he manage his luggage? Yes because he'd deliberately packed a weekend size suitcase. You packed it yourself? Obviously. But you might have forgotten things. Trust me I haven't (mum forgets I don't). He was surprised at the fuss people made as he said "I'm only travelling on a train for God sake."
More importantly IMO is the adaptability skills boarders learn, their ability to read situations, accept routines there not familiar with, work out what's expected of them, they don't need supervision from the mundane to the important to washing themselves, getting up, studying, etc. they learn to literally live alongside so many different personalities, they know when to back off, take an interest, respect privacy, work as a team, they've learnt they can't always have it there own way or always be the centre of the attention, these are life skill and skills particularly useful in the work. As a fairly recent mature student I was stunned at the lack of life skills of the majority of 18-19 year, many were so used to getting their own way at home they really struggled when we did group assignments, they didn't like it when others didn't work in exactly the same way they did, it's a steep learning curve when your also coming to terms with other things. Homesickness was common and quite a few sadly drop because of this. They also lacked adventure we were offered a year in Canada for our 2 nd year only 1 took it but she was 21 the others were afraid to experience such a different environment and leave their friends and family. I doubt boarders would have felt the same.

It would be normal for the younger children to be crying their eyes out on Sunday evenings, after spending 24 hours at home. I remember compulsory Saturday morning sport meant it was less than a weekend.

I think it does go a bit over the week. You do things like prep each evening or a common room to watch a film at night, and the routine blocks it out. So yes keeping busy and having things to do does help. And then after a year or two you're better.

I can see why people do it, we had to really, in a remote area, and I'm not sure why we all felt it so keenly.

I'm not sure friends of a variety of ages and so many is such a great benefit. I remember the older ones giving the year 7s hell! Especially the boys.

I attended a state school and suffered extreme bullying. School was prison in my eyes and consumed every part of me. I was there for 6.5 hours a day for five years. Those five years felt like they would never end. If I had been in boarding school suffering the same abuse from peers I would not have survived.

I had the opportunity to leave the school environment and this is how I survived my ordeal. I put it to the back of my mind and the anxiety came on Sunday evenings

I would not consider sending my dc to boarding school.

I was surprised at lottiedouble's list- I would have thought most kids could do all that. And as for your list, happygardening- I honestly don't see what's specific to boarding. Those are things you learn at a good school. Or while doing sport or at home.