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!

ugh

deliberately avoided this and glad i did

i was sent to bs aged 9 (military family) and hated it

initially i wanted to go as my head was full of malory towers and st clares. the reality was nothing like that. i missed home terribly but oddly i was so eager to be a good girl as my mum was so proud i was going to a private school that i never felt i could tell my parents how unhappy i was

my loneliness was compounded by the fact that my brothers stayed at home

it has irretreivably damaged my relationship with my mother imo

we are friendly but not close (but then she's like that with all my siblings too so may not be a bs issue)

i agree with posters who say that if something has to give, it has to be the job

it would have been far fairer to either a) have Dad come home to fixed address for the weekend or b) him leave the army altogether

my parents were utterly enamoured of the army life though and my dad rocketed up the ranks, my mum loved being an army life and was v active in the wives' club, going to all the functions etc

i look at my dd's (currently 5yo and 4.5mo) and I can't imagine doing it to them

A neighbour who is from Ethiopia, tells me that her family has been doing female circumcisions for generations. She is upset at not being able to perform this on her daughter while living in the UK. She says that even though all the girls scream and cry and suffer a little bit after the procedure, none are scarred for life and none of them resent their parents. It seems that a parent can justify almost anything in their own mind.

Eighties girl. The forces effectively 'own' you and will send you where they need you (and perhaps to a lesser extent where is good for your career.)

My DH has had 3 postings in 3 years and is currently commutting 3 1/2 hours at weekend back to us - because this one was only ever likley to be for a year so we decided that I wouldn't give up the job, rent the house and take dd out of nursery to go somewhere for a year - and then move again. His next posting is likely to be for 10 months I(again somewhere far away) so we will also stay here and after that he may get somewhere for a couple of years so we will then look to change jobs and schools and follow him.

It is a strain.

I thought April, the girl who was so distressed, looked a very sad individual at the end. She'd adapated, yes - because every message she had heard from every grown up for that whole term was "you will stay here and you will stop showing your distress, you will not upset your parents". But at what cost to her. She had clearly grown a carapace - the last little interview she gave sitting next to her friend showed she'd gained a bit of a superficial 'persona'. Shame the parents made her go through that. Her older brother who 'loved' boarding had clearly done the same; he'd closed down, put barriers up and chose not to see his parents much because of the distress he was trying to save himself.

I accept there are those who are fine with it, and of course there are those like these children who 'adapt' because there is no choice but I will never agree it is the right thing to do. All the justifications in the world about jobs/disruption etc are just so much self-delusion. It would always be better to change your job than send your children away, imho.

Good post Cirrhosis.

loungelizard - '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'

You see I would say the same about day nurseries. I'm guessing the numbers of full-time places for 6 month old babies nationwide dwarf the numbers of 8 yo currently at boarding school (there are not many boarding schools in the country to begin with, and in that whole massive school on the TV there were only 4 8-year-olds. I have friends who send DCs to flexi-board and there are barely any boarders under the age of 10, and most do only about 2 days a week. 8 yo full boarding is not usual.)

Day nurseries worry me as it is relentless, all-year round, far less holiday than a boarding school. And the rationalisations are exactly the same 'he cried at first but now he loves it'. Will all our kids be saying 'Well, it was the done thing back then in the circles in which we moved...'

i found the programme upsetting at first but by the end i think it highlighted that it suits some and not others-as with everything.lottie seemed to fit in perfectly and adapted to her new school very well,april however didnt.

dd and ds1(9 and 8) sat up and watched it(late i know but ds1 had had a bit of an accident),dd thought it looked exciting but said she wouldnt want to go.ds1 however thought it was a horrible thing!he thinks its called boring school!

thought it was a well made documentry

My dh was sent to BS aged 10 as a full time boarder, his brother stayed home and went to a normal school.....what message did that send to my dh as a small boy? His parents went through a messy divorce, his Father struggled to cope with dh's behaviour and beleived sending him to BS was in his best interests.

Dh ran away 3 times and once broke into the headmasters living quarters to use the phone so he could phone home

For me, there can never be a good reason to send your kids away to school, never ever. I would change everything else first.

"For me, there can never be a good reason to send your kids away to school, never ever. I would change everything else first"

DrN - well said indeed. You sum it up.

Homesickness is awful, it actually hurts. And in the end I loved boarding. Had great friends etc But the homesickness is bloody awful. It's hard for the adults to know that.

My mother and I get on great now. But the biggest thing it teaches is for the Adult: I will learn not to listen to my child's distress, I will detach from your emotions. And child: no one is listening to me, I can't control this, I will suppress it.

Then of course you grow up and it's normal, and you get more ice cream at school dinner and laugh at midnight feasts and the homesickness is gone.

OK, I think a lot of people are missing the entire point of Forces families sending their children to boarding school.

Forget all the continuity of education stuff - the main reason people do it is that the Forces affords the families the opportunity to give their children the best education they could hope for.

For example decent boarding school fees are approximately £24K per annum - so with a £15K military contribution it only costs them £9K per annum. A bargain.

I am allowed to say it as I am a Forces wife! I can ask anyone one I know in the forces with dc in boarding school - and they will all say 'It's such a perk, if they got rid of the boarding school allowance dh/dw would consider leaving'

The continuity of education issue would be way down their list of priorities.

I was just about to quote DrNortherner as well, which sums up how I feel.

I think I might have died of a broken heart if my DCs had gone to boarding school at 8, or even now as young teenagers.

"Homesickness is awful, it actually hurts" I agree with Marsha. It really does. I was one of those children. Something breaks inside of you. People may have reasons for it but this does not change what it does to a child. The final blow from school is always "don't upset your parents by crying". You become hard and detached and you learn to cope, but you are never the same again.

Interesting - I too found the programme really hard to watch and think 8 is too young for institutionalisation and learning to detach and yet my exdp has to put up with just seeing ds on weekends and a couple of hours on a weds and lots of men put up with a lot less - I never see that much sympathy for them on here.

great post Lightening.

I am going to go against the grain now and say that Aprils mum is not a bad mother. She came across to me as someone who is completely torn and who genuinely feels she is doing the best for her child. I don't believe she is comfortable with the situation at all and the documentary did not show her when she probably cries herself to sleep at night at at being separated from her daughter.

My heart went out to April though - she was a little girl who just wanted to be cuddled, and it made me cry when she was so upset. I know I could not do this to my DS (I know he would not settle - he is not confident enough and a very "young" 8) but no-one lives this womans life and to say she is being abusive is not true. She is misguided yes and seemed to speak before she engaged her brain on the programme sometimes, but the love between her and her daughter is so obvious. I find it interesting that the finger has been pointed so heavily on the mum when the dad was probably the driving force behind this from the looks of it. The mother, it appeared, would rather have her daughter with her but felt it would be selfish and detrimental to April to do so

Mum72 - you have been very brave to post what you did. This option sounds like it is right for you and your family - your children sound happy and your marriage has been saved. No-one on here is living your life and have no right to judge what is best for someone elses family.

Look, we get a mention here - not favourable though...entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article7023784.ece

oh dear, don't know what happened there

sorry

Personally, I will never be happy handing over my parental responsibility to anyone. Your child (at any age) will at best be 1 of 15 or 20 children and especially in the teenager years, I would like to be there. We have a so-called 'good' boarding public school in a good area and from all accounts it doesn't make a jot of difference and your child faces what he/she would face in a non-BS school but without the parental input.

My Father, MIL, DH and his siblings are all products of good BS and it does do some damage .

You also become so good at lying about your emotions that you believe it yourself. I can often not even tell when i am ill until I collapse. I rarely cry. I think that since I was 8 have have cried maybe twice.

This does not mean that I am happy. The fact that those children stop crying does not mean that they are happy either.

"But it was impossible not to feel provoked when watching a girl kneeling on her dormitory floor with her teddies arrayed in front of her, rocking back and forward as she keens with grief for her mother. Her tiny friend is shown, motherly, lifting her to stand. It is a pitiful sight."

from that article.

A couple of personal experiences here. I went to boarding school and we were allowed a weekly phone call. I got to the point where I didn't want my Mum to phone because I felt too sad after speaking to her. Just like April's brother. How can that not be damaging to a parent/child relationship?

Also the bit where they said they asked parents not to contact their children for a couple of days after the started, my parents were told the same and I didn't hear from them for two weeks after I started school, every day other children were getting letters and parcels and me and my sister got nothing, I cried every night because I was frightened they must have had a car crash on the way home and no-one knew. I actually went to my house mistress and asked if she could find out if my parents were alive because I was so scared that I hadn't had any letters, I was 9. They phoned my Mum that day and I got to speak to her but I am welling up now just thinking about that and how scared I was. I could never put my kids through it.

jesos thesteelfairy, madness. You poor thing. Crushing for that to happen at 9. I must have suppressed it, because I just got a bit teary reading your and Lightening's posts. Madness.

I liked this quote about the Mumsnet militia from that Times article: "The debates are entrenched and therefore tiresome."

So true.

It's brilliant when people take the time to on a thread. It adds so much...