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!

Have just heard a story from completely the other angle. Was talking to a friend who also watched documentary. She was also sent away young, also was homesick, cried and found it hard at first etc. Difference is, it transformed her life. She is musical. Went to a specialist music school then to mainstream public school on a scholarship. Parents could never have afforded all the music lessons etc. She then went to Cambridge to do music, which would never even have occurred to her (parents not Oxbridge types).

She ascribes her degree, career in music etc totally to being sent away to school - not just about the lessons but about the peer group, the ethos etc etc. She reckons had she been at local comp yes, she would have had more family life but she would have been bullied, found no kindred spirits and found it hard.

She knows it was incredibly hard for her parents, especially her mother. She is nothing but grateful that her mother made that sacrifice. And they are close, the mother is always at her concerts.

Obviously this is very particular circumstances. But thought I should share a positive story!!!!

'fascinating point you made about breaking the family bonds so that the man feels that his job is his family. '

Hmmn. Not so sure. Fighting men won't generally fight well if they are worried about their families. One of the dirty tricks used in WW2 was to send false intelligence about bombing raids to German submarines so that submariners worried that their children had been killed and suffered loss of morale.

It makes no strategic sense to have men distracted by concerns about their families: why would the MOD do that?

Found this programme really upsetting....especially the little girl whose army mum and dad were only moving to SUFFOLK for gods sake...not exactly timbuktu is it????

What on earth is that mother going to do with herself...dh is afganistan, children at boearding school and on her own in a new place????? Madness.

I really dont agree with the boarding school system at all (my mum calls them orphanages for the rich)...the mere fact that they keep the children occupied every minute of the day so they are "too tired" to miss home is almost victorian In fact, werent boarding schools first opened in the victorian era to cater for people who worked in india and the far east?????? Are they really neccessary in this day and age?????

hmm....

"And what that leads me to wonder is: could it be that this is the forces' way of doing what boarding schools do - breaking the attachments of the people who work for them, so that their primary attachment will be to the force in which they serve, because they don't get the chance to properly attach to places, neighbours, even their families? Is that what all the moving is really about?"

I don't think so - there is a great deal to support families (although it does vary from post to post). The MoD conducts surveys every couple of years into family attitudes and has no interest in detaching a soldier so much that his family suffers - often they vote with their boots and leave, meaning that the Services are deprived of the experienced and trained men and women they need. A little too much the conspiracy theory, eh?

tbh jscot, what you say about support for families doesn't chime with so many of the posts on 'forces sweethearts'. they were quite happy to leave wives absolutely desperate for money last year when there was some fuck-up with wages. officers wouldn't sign off on interim loans, padre wouldn't lend etc.

Boarding schools in one guise or another have been around since Medieval times, which is when some of the oldest, like Eton, were founded.

"tbh jscot, what you say about support for families doesn't chime with so many of the posts on 'forces sweethearts'. they were quite happy to leave wives absolutely desperate for money last year when there was some fuck-up with wages. officers wouldn't sign off on interim loans, padre wouldn't lend etc. "

There are exceptions and "Forces Sweethearts" is full of threads on them because when things go wrong, that's one place people can ask for advice. You don't get many threads saying "I just want to let you know how great the padre/CO etc has been...", perhaps because when things go well, people don't really discuss it - they're just glad the issue has been solved and they move on.

I can't speak for others but I've always had a good level of support but I have heard of other wives who've had bad experiences. I think a lot depends on the attitude of the Welfare Officer/Padre/CO on the base - if they are proactive, then there tends to be a good level of support.

There's also support available through AFF (and the Naval and RAF equivalents) the Hives and SSAFA.

well of course it's full of posts about when things go wrong. but they wouldn't have to post if the support you speak of was in place, would they? it's a bit of a non-point, jscot.

"well of course it's full of posts about when things go wrong. but they wouldn't have to post if the support you speak of was in place, would they? it's a bit of a non-point, jscot"

You're right - it would be great if support was universal but, unfortunately, it isn't. However, just as I can't extrapolate from my experience and say that all wives must have great support because I've experienced great support, you can't say that support is poor just because there are wives who have had poor support.

My point was that there are few (if any!) posts stating how wonderful it is that issues have been solved because if problems are dealt with as they arise they are not problematic, IYSWIM. Therefore when problems are not solved, people get upset and worried and wonder to whom they can turn and they may post here (or on other military sites) looking for advice.

So, sometimes in some postings for some circumstances suport isn't available when it should be. Levels of interest and support vary from base to base and, as I said, I think that can derive from the attitude of the Welfare Officer/CO/padre. It's wrong that it isn't some sort of universal system but bad experiences for some wives does not equate to a rotten system across the board.

i don't believe i said it was rotten across the board, did i? nor do i think it's a conspiracy theory that the military benefits from creating a different type of relationship between parent and child. it makes perfect sense, just look at the reaction on here, 99% of us cannot conceive of living separately from our children. the fact that those parents can send their children away at 8 indicates that they already have a different relationship with their kids, imo, and where they don't (as in the case of april and her mum), a system exists to break the bond.

abride you misunderstood.
Eightychick and I were saying that the army purposefully breaks the family bond so that they become better fighters. As you rightly say, if men are worried about their family they won't fight as well. So it's a good tactic to get the men to be emotionally detatched from their children by sending the kids off to boarding school. I think that all the moving around that takes place is most definitely unnecessary and could be an underhand trick on the part of the army to force the men to detatch themselves (so they won't worry about their family and will be better fighters!).

The MOD can barely organise itself to get essential hardware to troops overseas. I doubt they'd be capable of orchestrating cunning moves to ensure that they detach men from their families.

The 'army' doesn't tend to do a lot of this organisational stuff, btw, it's civil servants who are responsible for a lot of it.

I also read on another post that it was "expected" for the wives to follow the men and would be "impossible" for the mother to set up home alone with the children.

Expected? By whom?
The husbands? The army?

I understand that in the past women have been in weak positions and therefore for social and financial reasons may have had to blindly follow their men and give up their children, but that argument doesn't wash in 2010. Women can be financially independent these days; there is no stigma against divorce; there is homeschooling; a woman could live alone with the kids. I really cannot see any valid excuse for sending babies to boarding school.

abride,
you just wrote this in your 10:04 post:

"One of the dirty tricks used in WW2 was to send false intelligence about bombing raids to German submarines so that submariners worried that their children had been killed and suffered loss of morale."

So I think they are well capable of ensuring their fighters have weaker bonds than average with their families. Perhaps not so much thesedays, I'm sure, but if there is a culture in the army of sending kids off to boarding school then it could have its roots in this.

"I think that all the moving around that takes place is most definitely unnecessary and could be an underhand trick on the part of the army to force the men to detatch themselves (so they won't worry about their family and will be better fighters!)."

I really doubt that the personnel bods at the APC sit and think "Hmmm. Corporal X or Captain Y is spending too much time with the kidlets, lets post him to Benbecula so he can detach."

But of course, I'm just a brainwashed Forces wife so what do I know?

One of the reasons the Army encourages wives to move with their husband is to provide a measure of stability for the men in order to make sure that they are more content and happier and to help foster unit cohesion. While some choose to live apart for stretches of time, most still "follow the drum". The boarding school allowance is there for familes who choose to use it in response to the disruption to education that can arise from moving every time the serving partner is posted.

I really doubt there's some massive conspiracy to make us all detach from our children.

i don't think anyone's suggesting that it's done on a case by case basis, are they? just that it's institutionalised, that over hundreds of years they will have formalised a mechanism for creating 'family' bonds between fighting men, so that they'll kill and die for each other. for example, would my dh risk his life in a war and possibly rob my children of their father? i fookin' well hope not.

so they kinda must do something to a fighting man and a forces family to make that possible (unless they're only attracting sociopaths to the services). presumably it's all about duty and protection of his family, maybe? (but some might say that the best way to fulfil his duty to his children as a father is to be present with them when they're growing up?)

"just that it's institutionalised, that over hundreds of years they will have formalised a mechanism for creating 'family' bonds between fighting men, so that they'll kill and die for each other."

You're right in that they have a method of trianing that fosters unit cohesion and togetherness and a sense of brotherhood. However, they also foster the sense of the regimental "family" as a substitue for the relatives and friends left behind when a family moves with the Army. If you go on to an Army patch you'll find people of the same ages and stage in life, often with children around the same age, living and working together. There's an attitude of introducing yourself to your neighbours as soon as they move in and it's easy to make as many or as few friends as you like. Obviously, it's not like civvie street, where you have a broad mix of ages and society living cheek by jowl. I think that while you're right about the idea of fostering a "belonging" to the Forces, that sense of belonging is extended to the whole family, not just the serving partner.

My comments were more directed at those who appear to think that the moving around and the boarding school thing is

"...most definitely unnecessary and could be an underhand trick on the part of the army to force the men to detatch themselves (so they won't worry about their family and will be better fighters!)." (Sakura in her post of 11:32:02)

'presumably it's all about duty and protection of his family, maybe?'

Yes. And don't forget that many men are themselves the product of army families. My husband, who left when he was a major despite being promised a very good career, was from a military family. His uncles were generals. His friends are now generals, brigadiers, colonels, etc. All of them have sent their children to board at 8. We don't and my husband says at least once a fortnight that he's glad about this.

It's hard for some of the families to step outside the tradition and look at things differently because that's how they were brought up themselves.

People in certain social sets: upper-middle class army officers, perhaps find it harder than others to step outside the 'norm'.

Telling them that they are heartless, etc, is not the way to persuade them to change, IMHO.

yes, i can imagine that living on a base would be great from a social perspective, like the world's largest friendliest toddler group on your doorstep. but it's just cruel to me that the children's education must be sacrificed for a family to stay together. someone posted further down about their daughter sobbing about being removed from her best friend again, it must be awful. so while i don't deny for a minute that it's a terrible decision to send your child away from home, i do think that if it were me i would have to lose the job. the fact that the men don't is testament to those strong bonds, but i personally don't think that a man should bond more with his colleagues than his kids. (and from what i saw, it was the men rather than the women who were relaxed about the boarding school thing).

i don't think they're heartless, abride, i think they've been created that way, iykwim? officer class etc.

but then littlelapin's dh is an officer and she is one of the coolest people i've ever met and her son is a dish. i just can't imagine that her dh would have anything other than the absolute strongest bond with him.

No, that wasn't aimed at you Aitch, sorry if it seemed that way. It was comments further up, much further up that irked me.

It's a conundrum, that's for sure.

I would trust my husband's officer friends with my life. Seriously. They are about the most honest and genuine bunch of men I've met. No bravado. No bullshit.

I don't agree with the boarding school bit, you can't get round the fact that it's hard for the children, but I do wonder if it's on the way out, anyway. Apart from anything if the cuts go on the MOD won't be able to afford the subsidy.

That was meant to say, 'with my children's lives'. Not mine. Life of middle-aged old hag not such a thing worth saving!

lol.

How I wish I hadn't watched the Cutting Edge program. I have sobbed off and on since then.
I was separated from my mum for nine months, at the age of 2,5 yrs. I still remember how I felt. The only way I can describe it is that l felt as if I was going to die (obviously I didn't know what that meant then, but I recognise the feeling as an adult) I suffer from terrible separation anxiety ever since.
My DH was sent to BS at the age of eight. He tried to commit suicide aged 13. He was so depressed that his parents, in their wisdom, decided to leave him at school for holidays as well, in order to avoid the traumatic scenes every time he had to go back to BS.
My DH and I are emotionally scarred for life, and I think in turn we are overly attached to our own children. They're day pupils at a very good private school. Our daughter, aged 13, is now begging to be allowed to board. It fills us with absolute horror.....but what do we do? Do we agree to let her go and hurt ourselves in the process (the mere thought of her leaving for BS gives me a dry mouth and heart palpitations) or do we say no, and disappoint her?