Wednesday night, sending your child, aged 8 to boarding school, do tell me about it as i won't be able to watch!!!

[piratecat]

I couldn't even watch the trailer for it without wanting to weep!

Herbietea, what a lovely thing for your ds to have said, so mature and sensitive. I'm sorry he got upset.
Dh sent me to watch it upstairs as he was so disgusted with it. He has many friends who were sent to boarding school, all of which can't forgive their parents for putting them through it.
Those poor girls tonight, I just feel so sad for them. It's just not natural for parents to do this. I wish I could of given them the hugs they deserve and so crave. Poor poor kids.

Docbunches-yes she looked about to cry
she was gap yr student not nurse htough

"It leaves a void...but I have been spending more time joining in with the pub quiz team..."

Ah ok that makes sense. Unfortunately DH is medical so can work ANYWHERE!!!!!!!

I found this very hard to watch. DD is 8 and I can't imagine it.

Dh was sent away at 5 to a boarding school in the same town. His dad and younger brother were both very ill but still, he could see his street in the distance from the dorm window and he only went home in the holidays. It has had a very bad effect on him.

I know a lot of people who went at 11-13 and seem happy enough with it. They were mostly army families.

5!!!{shock] Poor wee man

lol @ local pub quiz comment

Yep, and had to stand against the wall for talking after lights out. Sounds more like Dickens than 1980.

Docbunches she was the gap year student so presumably had only just left boarding school.

Right, I am going to be crucified here, but here goes.

We sent our 8 year old away to boarding school (dh is RAF and we where posted from England to Scotland, and back again).

We had 14 house moves in 8 years - so think 14 schools.

By age 8 my daughter had had 4 schools. She was the new girl all the time and bullied.

We sent her away. She loved it.
She is an only child. At boarding school she had loads of sisters.

She is 21 now. At uni studying law. Comes home every weekend for free food (plus she has a weekend job).

We have a lovely relationship. We are very close.

It is easy to sit on a sofa, watch an edited TV programme and criticise.

The families featured would not have taken this route lightly, believe me.

I don't really understand why the mum and dad wouldn't live apart - with the dad visiting when he can - rather than the parents living apart from their children.

Let's face it, alot of it is the army/services culture, there isn't really any need to send a child away to boarding school at that age.

They actively want their children to end up like the brother, whatever he was called, Alex?, and then turn into their father etc etc. The mothers,too, find that attractive, hence marrying him and so it goes on. Was very sad for little April(she has no choice and was very sad about it) but I bet she'll end up marrying an army officer and the parents will both be v. proud. Job done.

yy, I would live away from dh in a heartbeat if it otherwise involved me living away from the dcs.

It is kind of saying that you prefer your dh to your children, which personally, much as I love him, I don't.

I'd much rather live with my kids than live with my husband and send my kids away.

agedknees -what do you think about the alternative , the father doing the moving around?
glad your dd coped well

agedknees - I expect the parents on teh programme also say their kids love it too.

I am sure there are 8 yr olds who go to boarding school and thrive but sending children that young is not the norm. I think this programme reflects that pretty well. If they did a programme of children going at 11 or 13 it would be completely and utterly different.

If I had to choose between being with my dh and being with my dcs I can't imagine making any choice but to be with my dcs. I really don't see how depriving a child of both their parents is beneficial.

Wow! So your husband is in Afghanistan and your beloved daughter is in another county at boarding school - you don't appear to have anything constructive or absorbing occupying your time. I think that woman needs to seriously re-examine her life.

David Cameron talks about broken Britain and the fact that families are fractured (implying that there are all these single women bringing up children without the influence of fathers) - well that programme just reinforced the idea of emotionally absent fathers BIG TIME.

Very shocked and want to give my parents a big hug.

My entire childhood was a forces one and we moved anything from 6 moths to a year to 2 years. Couldn't tell you how many schools dsis and I went to in all. My parents refused to send us to boarding school.

My father once got offered an amazing posting in Hong Kong a place he loves,they asked us if we'd like to go to boarding school( we were now secondary so they were worried about exams).We were horrified,the Hong Kong posting was never mentioned again.

Forces childhoods are hard but to have gone to boarding school at 8 would have been an awful lot worse. My mother worked hard to make a home and make it feel stable. Our home wherever it was was soooo important, to have had that wrenched away would have been just awful. That poor little girl must have been worried sick about her father going to Afganistan she needed her family around her not a group of strangers.

Dsis and I have come out of frequent moving intact,pretty strong and with degrees. There is absolutely no need to put a forces child into boarding school,the vast majority of my friends didn't go. Sadly the only couple I knew that did go are pretty screwed up. I think parents that do it are just using the forces thing as an excuse to justify using the help with fees and thus getting a cheap private education. When we were young you had to board to get the fees assistance.

Very,very sad.

Watching it again on 4+1 'look what you're doing making mummy cry'. No wonder poor April has such a tough time.

Totally agree with everyone, have just said to dh "sorry but I'd much rather live away from you than live away from the kids"

Rainbow, I remember the thread recently about boarding school, it was v thought provoking - many ex-boarder mnetters contributed, about 95% of whom basically dispelled the myth that boarding school is fun, even though they felt conditioned to declare the contrary while going through it. They learned to believe it was fun so as not to hurt their parents. Some of them mentioned a kind of 'Stockholm Syndrome' kicking in once they became acclimatised... I'll see if I can find it..