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!

You poor things Unhappy, how awful.

Leaving your dh there for holidays too is obscene.

How upsetting Unhappy. Does your DD have friends who are swapping to boarding? Perhaps she feels she'll be left out if she doesn't board. Is it at the same school and if yes, do boarders and day pupils share lessons?
Also, does your DD know about you and your DH's experiences? If yes, she perhaps could feel as though she must prove she's different and her own person - even though for you, it's very distressing to contemplate sending her to BS.

"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). "

There is no easy option. If you send your child away to school, especially at a young age, then you run all the risks that entails. If you live in one place while your husband commutes it can place a starin on the marriage, especially if the commute is a long one and there's still the problem of children spending little time with their father. If you move around and take your children with them, then you just take whatever education they're given and hope that the disturbance doesn't harm their future prospects too much.

My husband looked at coming out a few years ago and it simply wasn't worth it. The jobs for which he was qualified all involved a large pay cut (if we wanted to stay in Scotland) or a move down south (not ideal considering we wanted to be closer to family). Right now, he can't leave for another four and half years as it simply wouldn't make financial sense - if he leaves now, he gets £9,000 lump sum and he would get a pension that would kick in when he's 65. If he waits four years (and gets his promotion within that period) it's a £70,000 lump sum and a pension payable as soon as he hangs up his boots.

There's also the problem of what he would want to do. He's been in uniform one way or another since he 17 as TA then OTC then Regular. He's never wanted to do anything else and the challenge and variety of his job keep him interested and stimulated as well physically fit. He'd hate to come out and do a desk job. An awful lot of ex-Corps members end up doing the same job for other governemnt agencies or for private military firms or security assessors, so that's where his contacts lie. I honestly can't see him coning out until he's done a full career.

unhappymemories, whilst I am not a fan of boarding school I have read the book "The making of them" which is about the effects of boarding school and they felt that the most emotional separation damage is done when the child is sent before puberty and that once they reached puberty they naturally start to detach from their parents as part of the growing up process so as your daughter is 13 this may be what is starting to happen.

That along with the fact that she is choosing to board rather than you deciding for her, and also that if she was at all unhappy you wouldn't hesitate to stop her boarding rather than pressing on with it means that she is much less likely to suffer ill doing from it in my opinion.

jcscot - my dh will definitely stay in 'til he's 55 as well. Is you dh in a Scottish regt?

Not a Scottish Regt, no. He's non-infantry, in one of the smaller specialist corps, currently in the Bunker outside London. He was a Gordon Highlander when he in the OTC at Aberdeen Uni (where we met aeons ago) but he didn't go down that route after Sandhurst. We do know a fair few people in Scottish ret, though - the Army is really quite small, isn't it?

Your husband is in a Scottish regt, isn't he (I seem to remember talk of kilts... )

He has twinges of "...maybe I should think about PVRing...", occasionally followed by desultory glancing at various job pages/websites and then they dangle his next posting or promotion chances in front of him and he decides to chase that carrot instead. He has always said that if it came down to our marriage or his career, the career would go and he would leave but I'd hate to be in such a bad positon that I was issuing an ultimatum. Personally, they'll have to kick him out when he's come to the end of time - we still have 19 years left to push until he hits 55.

Thanks - yes, very well remembered re the kilt!! Dh has another 13 years to go and hopes to get at least 1 one more promotion.

The army is very small and you may know people I know!

"The army is very small and you may know people I know!"

I probably do! You know how it is when you move to a new posting and you get chatting to a neighbour and it turns out they lived next door to someone you know, or their brother is the same capbadge as your husband or something similar. It's not six degrees of separation - more like two! I'm always surprised by how small the Army is when it comes to that.

We're hoping that my husband will get promoted after this job - he gets his first look at the Pink list next year but we'd be exptrememly lucky if he came off then (especially as he's only commisioned in since '99) but there's always a better chance the following year. Beyond that - well it's all in the lap of the gods. He's done quite well so far and is really enjoying it, so I can't see him coming out while his prospects are good but he may chage his mind, I suppose.

'There are no alternatives' is a total cop out .There is.Leave the forces !!They are little more than mercenaries now anyway
I don't know why anyone with children would want to deliberately put themselves in such a risky situation anyway.
Put your children first !!

"There is.Leave the forces !!They are little more than mercenaries now anyway
I don't know why anyone with children would want to deliberately put themselves in such a risky situation anyway.
Put your children first !!"

And do what? My husband is in a well-paid job, with good promotion and advancement prospects, an excellent pension and good job satisfaction. He's in public service (just like the police or the fire service) and does a valuable job. There's nothing on civvie street right now that would tempt him from the variety and challenges he faces in his current career.

We do have alternatives to boarding school, as mentioned before (staying put while one's husband/partner commutes - as I'm doing right now - or moving the children around). Forces life can be exciting and rewarding for the family as well. You can put your children first without sacrificing your marriage or your career, you know.

princessparty - the armed forces have their faults (as do the politicians who deploy them) but as an ex-member of the armed forces, with a serving husband, I do take issue with being accused of being a mercenary!

From what highly qualified position do you speak? I am assume you have personal experience of living in numerous banana republics, have dealt with lots of mercenaries and also worked closely with the British military to make this sweeping point?

I don't think asking men to leaev the Forces as soon as they have children is a workable scenario. I realise that most service men now aren't actively defending the country but that doesn't mean they will never ever have to. And when the need arises, that is not the time to start building a force.

But that also doesn't mean they have to sacrifice either their marriage or their relationship with their child. There must be a middle ground somewhere! And if there really isn't, then it should be created. I really cannot swallow the line that sending Forces children to BS is the only option.

luciemule

"Forces families adapt very well to moving house and for me, moving house isn't stressful at all. It's normal. Families can quickly get settled in within a day or two and unlike in civvie street where, more often than not, neighbours hardly say hello to each other, forces families just crack on and have an instant social life. The children just become like brother and sisters to one another and are always in and out of each others houses; playing in the garden, having tea etc"

Yes, I can totally understand that they can and do do that. But you are referring to children and families who live in quarters, surely? Not to those children who visit parents in quarters at weekends and holidays because their main life happens at boarding school. To me, yes, they are visiting a home, but how can it possibly feel like THEIR home if they are hardly ever there, and then the whole family moves on 18 months later? It's the place where their parents are, yes, but it won't be as familiar to them just visiting at weekends and holidays as if they were actually living there permanently.

Thinking again about the mum that said that because she sees her daughter just at weekends and holidays it means she only gets the "nice bits" of being a parent, well, I can't helping thinking that it sounds more like the relationship that a child might have with their favourite aunt or grandparent who lives a distance away. Visiting them is a treat because it doesn't happen very often and somehow you're on your "best behaviour" with those relatives than you are with your own parents. Imagine visiting your parents at home for the weekend and feeling you couldn't possibly relax enough to be chastised by your mum because then it would be spoiling the atmosphere of the very short time you had together. Surely you would feel under pressure to be well-behaved and smiley and happy the whole time you visited? Whereas a day pupil can come home, relax enough to play up a bit and be told off for it, or be a bit down about something that had happened at school that day, go to bed not in the best of moods, yet they have the reassurance of knowing that they are home the next night after school and the atmosphere will be back to normal and the previous night won't have mattered one jot.

These kids must feel such pressure all the time, in so many ways.....

This thread becomes more bizarre by the minute.

I know. Unfortunately (or so it appears to me) whenever a thread with a significant Forces element to it gets going, there's a lot of ignorant stuff spouted by people who have little to know experience of the Forces and the sensible posts get lost in the nonsense.

I suppose the Forces element got going here because the children featured had Forces parents, so people felt free to get all judgy mcjudgy about Forces life in general.

I'm still amused by the conspiracy theories about why we all move so often.

Thanks so much for your answers, I've been feeling so down since I saw the programme and I realise now that I can't burden my dd with the experiences that her dad and I've had. She is a person in her own right and I guess I should be grateful that she is confident enough to want to go toBS.
Most of her friends will stay on as day pupils but she is adamant that she would be extremely happy at BS. Maybe trying to escape her suffocating parents??? Btw, we can't afford boarding fees but relatives have promised to help.. At the moment she's away on a school trip, no contact allowed with home and I'm the one sitting here with tears in my eyes wondering how to get through six days of not a single word from her...

unhappy - can she flexi-board? That way perhaps she feels that she may get the best of both? I think as others have said that 13 is rather different than 8, but I can completely understand how your experiences have impacted on your feelings about her wanting to board. My cousins hated every second of their boarding school and barely talk about it, let alone see people who were there at the same time, whilst I loved mine and feel as though I have 20 sisters as a result - although funnily enough, having been back to a reunion recently, I decided that for various reasons I wouldn't want to send DD there.

I don't know about that, hf128219 and jcscot. I think most people have been quite balanced in their posts. They KNOW that forces life is very very difficult and that whatever people decide to do it entails difficulties for a family. My own DH, while not in the forces, is in a job which involves very irregular hours, being away a lot and it does disrupt home life - there is a high divorce rate - so I can understand a lot of what it must entail.

However, the thing that I think most people on here are still astounded at is how people can choose to send a child of 8 away from the family home for the child's "own good." From numerous posts of personal experience on here, it clearly hasn't been any good for the child whatsoever - in fact, the opposite. Of course, for all we know April's family might well have said to her "If you aren't settled there after 3 months then there is always the option to come home - we aren't going to make you stay somewhere you hate." It was a bit ambiguous as to what the actual agreement was, but we all jump to conclusions I suppose and take it that the child has no say in the matter. The programme-makers WANT these ambiguities I suppose, so that we all have something to say about it afterwards.

Personally, once a child is about 12 or 13 and naturally starting to separate from his/her parents (as someone has already mentioned) then if a forces family (and more importantly, the child concerned) wants to allow their child the option to attend boarding school then I'm not going to hold my hands up in horror and scream that it's all wrong, because that's not the case. I'm sure for some families and individual children then it's the best, and happiest option.

But the whole contentious point of the programme was the age at which it was done. I think people are trying to find a reason for WHY Forces families feel it's a good thing for a child so young to board, hence all the questioning and postulating. Is that being all judgy mcjudgy? I don't know.

Unhappymemories.' 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? '
You say no and disappoint her.You are the adult she is the 13 yr old.

Frankly for you to advise on 'adult' responses to situations is ironic, given your 'mercenaries' comment.

lasttrainto geneva

recent thinkings in social work circles are that the parent is NOT always best - no?

princessparty - you are a font of all knowledge. In your own opinon. Personally I think you should wind your neck in.

i am lolololing at the name mcbitchy. lolol.

And the non-UK forces have a lot of other perks too.