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!

I dont think anyone has said that everyone is screwed up in adulthood after going. That doesnt make it okay though.

zapostrophe- I hear you totally. .

Yes, there are kids who hated boarding school and are "traumatised" by it. There are kids who hate day school and were "traumatised " by that too, so saying "boarding school is bad because X went and hated it" is ridiculous.

I begged to go to boarding school non-stop from 8 to 18 (unfortunately parents couldn't afford it). Some kids really thrive - my cousin (a boy) who went aged 8, hated school before he started boarding, then completely loved it. My Dh also boarded from 8 and loved it- actually started as day boy but begged to board to be like everyone else.

I think a lot of anti-boarding school attitudes come from people who have never been near one in real life.

Boarding school provides stability for poeple with parents in the military or who are long term expats. You have to weigh up the pros of a child being in one school vs possibly 5/6 different schools, vs the temporary con that they will be homesick for a few weeks. Saying "wel you shouldnt move around if you have kids" is ridiculous. Your life doesnt stop when you have children.

I hope they revisit these children at the end of term as I think you'll find most will have adapted quite well.

'And they read about what wastes of space they are.'

That was an extremely unkind and unpleasant thing to say.

'That was an extremely unkind and unpleasant thing to say.'

Far less unkind and unpleasant than limiting phone contact with your own child who is crying every night because she misses you.

So sue me.

There are thousands who have to leave their children to live with relatives or one spouse so they can work abroad out of desperate necessity.

Not to swan around walking a dog in a park talking about how 'it's a void in your life you just have to fill' about your own child you palmed off when you have an 11-year-old child who doesn't even want to come back to his own home to see you at weekends.

Says it all, really.

i think april had adapted 'quite well' by the end of term, she had detached from her parents just enough to see her through the experience of boarding. i do take your point about day school being traumatic for many children (of course that's usually for being bullied, which also happens in boarding school).

tbh i completely disagree that one's life doesn't stop when you have children. the pre-children life is a different beast altogether, compared to the post-children one. april's parents were plumb, straight-up wrong to send her to boarding school after seeing the effect it had on her son, who doesn't like to spend time with them if he can help it because he doesn't want to get used to them being around. why they would seek to replicate that situation is beyond me, it's heartbreaking. and then on top of that to leave your child sobbing and actually remove contact from her so that she can 'detach', well, it's pretty disgusting imo. the mother should have moved to a house nearby and left someone else to walk her bloody dog.

You expect some OTT reactions on MN but implying that sending a child to board at prep school is tantamount to abuse, is, frankly, ridiculous.

And extremely offensive.

i think that removing maternal phone contact from your child so that she will emotionally 'detach' from you aged 8 is abusive, completely. i apologise for the offence it causes you.

But to leave your child sobbing her heart out, and to limit contact so that she becomes detatched from you is not exactly the best form of parenting is it manfrom?

Surely you can't expect people on a parenting forum to think that the idea of encouraging your child to become detached from you at 8 years old is a good one?

What do people think about double-job families where the children are effectively brought up by a series of nannies?? Because believe me I have seen enough of them. Both parents working late, children put to bed by the au pair every night?? They are probably seeing their children as much as they would if they were weekly boarding. Also 'wastes of space?' I think there are all kinds of less-than-ideal scenarios in parenting and boarding school has its advantages and disadvantages like all the others.

I also know a family where the mother is in the services and constantly being posted. What's she supposed to do?

I'm not pro or against particularly but I think it's easy to judge when you haven't seen what the other options truly are. Yes it would be lovely if we could all rearrange our lives around our kids. Doesn't always work out like that.

Personally I think a Cutting Edge documentary about leaving six month old babies at nursery all day would be far more traumatic for me but because so many people do it and it's not seen as 'posh', somehow it's more accepted.

The whole thing was cruel imho.

ach, tbh i do think that if a family can afford not to work all the time and have a series of nannies bring up their kids, then not taking the down-grade in lifestyle is a shitty choice. re the six month old in nursery, yes, i probably would be upset watching that too. but i'm not sure how that makes this better.

I'm not in any way against boarding schools and can understand why parents need to use them. Just think that aged 8 is too young.

I agree life changes when you have children but I still maintain it doesnt stop. A parent is still a person with ambitions and needing challenges of their own. You can't live vicariously through your children- they have to do their own thing.

I personally think that for many kids (not all)8 is too young. However, one of the issues is that if you wait till 11/13, and the child has had a sub-optimal education up until then (due to moving around a lot- different curriculums etc), they may well not get accepted at 11/13, and then they're going to carry on changing schools every couple of years all the way through.

Did anyone clock the gap year student working there who said, 'Every week I begged my mother to come get me,' she paused and said flatly, 'She never did,'?

I do see why it seems like a viable choice for military families, in a way I simply don't understand at all for civilian families without the moving/job issues.

I don't want to seem to be having a go at the military either, but wondered if anyone can explain - why are there so many moves involved in being in the forces? I don't mean postings abroad to Afghanistan or whatever - I can understand perfectly why those are time-limited. I mean the kind of thing described here happening within the UK - 4 house moves in several years. Do the forces just move people around every 6-12 months as routine? What is the operational need for this? Surely if there is a job you do and are needed to do in, say, Hampshire, the Army could keep you in that job for a minumum number of years to minimise the moving around? I would welcome an explanation from anyone who knows why it is done that way - I know very little about it but from the outside simply don't understand the moving within the UK so often.

By the way, kudos to the forces mums who have posted and explained why they have made these choice.

But coffeeaddict - with a nursery you see the baby every morning, every night, all weekend. And most children are not there full time either, so with parent(s) the other days.

I don't see the comparison with sending children, who are sobbing their heart out to mummy about it, awy for a week or term at a time.

Just to add to point the other forces wives/partners have made. I am a daughter of forces personnel, served in the military myself and am now married to an RAF officer and we have a daughter.

We have already discussed that up to the age of 11/12 we will move as often as necessary (as long as DH is being posted somewhere for more than a few months, so I can keep some sort of job continuity for my CV) to keep the family unit together. After that age if DH is still serving (which is a big 'if') then he will commute and dd and I will stay in one place to give her some continuity at secondary school. This is what my mum and dad did for me and it worked fine - at primary school age most children will adapt to lots of different schools/friends - in fact I would argue that it can be a beneficial experience. At secondary then obviosuly the academic requirements mean changing schools is much more damaging.

We do not intend to send her to boarding school.

Forces life is different, and much could be written on the difficulties of holding the family unit together and also pursuing a career (as opposed to any job) for a forces wife. I have a career, but with a long commute (because of the isolated nature of many forces bases) and a DH who is away most of the time, it is a difficult balancing act.

I still dont understand why these families choose to send their children away at this age - but neither DH or I were privately educated or sent away to board, so it seems far from the norm for us. Army officers (in particular) are statistically speaking, more likley to come from that background so it may seem normal to them.

I've not read the debate going on here, but I watched the programme and sobbed like a baby. Hated the really forced happy ending too, I didn't believe it had all settled down at all with that little girl who sobbed every night. I wanted to go and get her and take her to live with us.

April's mum is probably right to be worried that she will turn round when she's older and say you should have taken me out of boarding school, I myself went at 9 and can recognise all the emotions she went through and when I became an adult I did turn round and tell my mum that I didn't think she did the right thing.

You cannot deal with the feelings of sadness at that age, they just get buried in the end as a way of coping. I am in my late twenties now and those feelings are still there under the surface when I think about being left at school.

Hi eighties chick. I'm not sure about soldiers but for officers it's due to the promotional structure and the fact that you have to get experience in different jobs to go up through the ranks. Also, you might get promoted but there are no jobs of that rank at your current location so you move. I think even if you dont want promotion you have to rotate to allow other people to do the same and so you keep your experience fresh. A lot of postings are 2 years. Sometimes they are then extended, or another job comes up at that location, but sometimes it doesnt. Sometimes you get very short postings to fill gaps.

Hopefully a forces mum will come on and give an example which will make it clearer.

My instinct tells me that for a baby, time spans are different. A day is very long and they don't actually KNOW they're going to see their parents ever again which for me is even more chilling. Of course it's not the same, and I don't think either option is great, but I wonder if nurseries would get the same ire.

Indeed some cultures where they start school later might look at us peeling little four-year-old fingers off sobbing mummies' arms and say 'Why the * are you sending your children to school all day when they're clearly too young for it?'

I just think it's more complex than 'one option great other option evil'.

I know of someone who moved a child after he experienced bullying at school nearest to the base--a school where the haircut de rigeur was so short as to be almost shaven. And the children's and parents' views were to the right of the National Front.

But of course, she was being cruel.

Expat - Yes, I noticed that and the way her face dropped after saying it.

I grew up in a military family. My sister went to boarding school at 11, after having attended 7 primary schools (which, being a shy and sensitive girl, she found very hard).

Tbh, she did not enjoy it very much and when the school closed 2 years later, the decision was made to send her to the local army school (we were posted in Germany), although that school was pretty rough, so I don't think it was an easy decision.

I never went, for which I'm eternally grateful, as I would have found all that enforced socialising very difficult, plus I loved moving around and living in new places.

fwiw, i agree with coffee addict. Last night's program was awful to watch. But I think watching a program about parents leaving a baby in all-day nursery would be even more heart-breaking. In large part that's because the full time day nursery option chosen by so many more parents than the boarding school option.

The point is, they all explained why they were doing it, as have the parents on here, and they believe they are doing the right thing, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

However, what needs to be addressed is whether it really is the right thing for an 8 year old child. Whether it's a case of them just getting over it or a complete and utter trauma is never really going to be known, until they are grown up and are able to articulate their feelings without all the culture of boarding school/army life/parents' expectations influencing their perception of it.

The boarding school itself was pleasant enough and the staff kind and motherly to the children, esp the Gap year girl (one wonders why she chose to spend her gap year there, whilst also saying she used to beg her mother to take her home....trying to lay the ghost, I suspect). It is just the basic concept of sending a child away from home that I find extraordinary, albeit to get a good education (let's not forget that bit, which was uppermost in most of those parents' minds). I tend to think one could get just as good an education without boarding, but then the parents have to take responsiblity for the homework, general teenage behaviour etc in term time, as well as holidays, which they didn't seem to find particularly attractive!!!

Don't really think it amounts to child abuse per se, just the parents wanting what they perceive to be the best for their children in the circles in which they move.