Going off to Boarding school as eight year old girls

just watching it.. lot of tears.

Heart rending, my youngest GC is eight, it is still very young.

I think back in the day it was more common for children to go to boarding prep schools often as young as seven.

Also I think that now more is done to help children adjust and these schools are kinder and more child centred.

I remember hearing that some prep schools used not to allow new children to talk on the 'phone to their parents for the first month of their first term and they were made to write home saying how nice it all was and how happy they were even if the opposite was true.

My husband went at 7 to prep school, he loved it once he got used to it.
He then went on to public school and boarded to 18, he was very happy.
Our youngest boarded from 11, it was his decision.

I do think 8 is far too young though.

I could never have sent my children away to boarding school.

There were a couple of small boarding schools near us when I was young. They took children from very early ages many of whom had parents in the armed forces.

When I went to grammar school we played hockey matches against them and we pestered them to let us see their “dorms”. We had read books about boarding schools when we were younger and thought it was fantastic.

However, they sneaked a few of us in and it was awful, beds separated by curtains and an ancient locker and that was it! They were so envious of us going back to our families and being able to eat what we liked and do what we wanted.

It's cruel! My ex was sent at 7, don't know how his parents could do it. He has been unable to keep a relationship since!

My father was in the forces and I was given the option of staying in England and going to boarding school. I chose to stay with my family and have never regretted that decision. I think if a child has a particular interest or talent, they would benefit from attending just the one school. However, the age of 8 is too young.

I hate the thought of boarding schools at any age but 8 my word they are still babies it is cruel Why give birth to children to then send then away (it’s often bad for the mother too)
I would sooner live in a cave with my child than send them away
I can read as many ‘it was a good decision’ stories as you like I
Still think it’s damaging all round
Why have a house master putting them to bed ?

I knew a guy who had been boarded from very young and he was a lovely chap but very damaged as regards relationships

My brother went at 9. He hated it but put up with it although he once tried to run away and was found and returned. He wrote his memoirs recently ( he's 70) as a cathartic experience. My Dsis and I wrote to him often but had no idea of how awful it was.
He became a teacher but not in boarding school.
As you say though, it can be a positive experience.
I went at age 15 for the 6th form and liked my school. I made very close friends there and for me it was a chance to escape a rather toxic home life.
Now I shall look at the clip!

I was 11 when I went to BS. Not ideal in the 60’s. Basic and sometimes cruel but it made me more resilient I think. I would never have sent my children away. The youngest was a 5 year old which was downright wrong. Older parents whose London business was more important than their child. I often wonder how she developed as she grew up. She’d be 69 now. I can understand in a way how and why service kids are sent to BS. It gives them some form of stability and boarding is so very different these days 65 years on (in most cases). 😢

Is it different though marmight ? it is still severing the family connections, and giving the upbringing in part to a stranger

Why would you have a child to send it away at 8 or any age it must do damage to that child how ever much anyone argues it is good for them
A child’s place is with its family whether they are moving a lot or not I was a service wife, we got divorced, but had we stayed married the children would have come with us wherever we were sent or I would have stayed with them here if it was an inappropriate (troubled area)
I think it’s cruel however much it is disguised as being good for them

I shall have a look at this. DS went to boarding school when he was 11, just before we went off on a NATO posting. Leaving him there was the worst thing we’d ever had to do. We sat in the car and cried, and I didn’t stop for days! But, he was a gregarious sporty boy and it suited him. He was very self sufficient and had no qualms about travelling. He went on to have a very good career in the services himself. Then we were faced with doing it again when DD was 11 and DH was offered, as his final posting, Hong Kong. It should have been the icing on the cake for him, but he turned it down and took one in this country instead. She was a very different child to her brother and we knew she would be unhappy. There was an officer that DH worked for whose twin sons were 7 when they went away to school, and a naval officer’s wife with whom I was quite friendly whose son was utterly miserable at his school, but it was needs must.

I went at the age of 5, but my mother was unwell and could not care for me. I had a cousin there. I was not there for long but went to another at the age of 11, and I loved every minute. Home would have been a nightmare, and I dreaded the holidays.

I have a friend who went away to boarding school at 8 years old in the uk. She just regarded it as normal. Personally I think it is dreadful.

I have now watched the film. Not sure what the message is.
Does BS make for more resilience?

When I was a toddler I was in hospital for several weeks with whooping cough. In those days, 1950s, it was considered best to not allow any visiting. It upsets the children. All those tears was the view.
Now that seems inhuman!
Apparently when DM came to take me home I refused to look at her.

Oh dear perhaps I should have therapy now. 😔

Lots of DC have to go into Foster care. There will always be miserable separations but the idea of boarding school is to somehow normalise this separation and even to admire it. That can't be right.

A friend of mine was sent to boarding school in the fifties, aged 8. He once told me " You soon learn to hide your feelings when you're lying in bed at night trying not to cry, because you know the other boys will tease you."

I went to boarding school at the age of 7 on the recommendation of doctors at Great Ormond Street hospital who had been treating me for a bowel condition. I have no idea why this suggestion was made. I was there for about 5 terms, but when my father, who was in the army, was posted to Hong Kong we all went with him.

I went to boarding school again at 11 and was there until 18. At 14 my father was posted overseas again and this meant that for three years my sister and I spent most of our school holidays with our grandparents, only going home for the summer holidays. My parents discussed the situation with us and we chose to stay at school in England, rather than face the possibility of three more school changes and having to return to England only months before we did our O levels and A levels respectively.

It is all very well for people to say, they could never do it, or it is dreadful, but between 5 and 11 I went to 8 schools and missed, in all, 4 terms of schooling due to a mixture of hospital stays and travelling between postings.

It was fortunate that my sisters and I were all academically bright, so that we managed to keep up with our contemporaries, academically, despite our fractured and disrupted education, but many children did not and when back in the 1980s the BBC started literacy programmes on television. It was noticeable how many adults who struggled with literacy came from military backgrounds like mine.

At boarding school most of the other boarders came from backgrounds like mine; armed forces, diplomatic and other jobs that meant parents travelled overseas a lot. It was the only way we could have a structured education.

I know it caused my parents, especially my mother, great distress, but my sister and I always felt secure in our parents love and care for us and, as a family, we always remained close.

When I was in my early teens I was friendly with a lad who had been to a private day school from age 5. It came to secondary school time and his parents sent him to a boarding school not far away. He really did not want to go and told them so but his Dad was a retired Captain and said it would do him good.

All he wanted was to go to school with a few of us other village kids. He was always running away from school and deliberately shirked his school work and was always in trouble. Every time they sent him back. He finally got thrown out in his last year and I think got no qualifications.

He has had a variety of low paid jobs like gardening, decorating etc and has had serious alcohol problems. I think he would have been much better off not boarding.

Sago, my husband also went to boarding school at 7 - he survived (but had his teddy taken away on day 1). He stayed in that system to A'Level.

He says its "sink or swim".
If you are a swimmer you will survive.
Unfortunately he is still haunted by those who were not swimmers at all - and drowned - and those that he (and othets) were unable to keep properly afloat.

I think I've over stated this... he is not "haunted" by it but whenever he talks about boarding schools he always raises the cruelty of the system. He mentions the boy who took his own life and those who were forever in "The San" and those who just dissappeared "to hospital".

He has tried to find some of these ex-boys online and has found one.
He has found many more in positions of power though - particularly media, politics, sport!

What it has done for my husband is it's made him acutely aware of the underdog, thecneglected and those who are "othered" - and I do so love him for that!

He was lucky to be both bright and sporty so did not experience the horror of being an outsider as some did.

When we lived in the Middle East in the 80s I knew someone who sent her 8 year old dd away to BS, despite there being an excellent English-speaking primary school attended by virtually all the E-S expat children. The mother wasn’t even working. I just could not understand it.

It’s all very well saying it’s sink or swim but what if you sink or worse still you get through, but sink in adult life
I can see that little girl clinging to the first man that’s shows her attention she is so traumatised by the constant goodbyes and ‘being left’

Yes she eventually learnt to handle it and get by, by clinging to a best friend, it’s very unfair, children shouldn’t be shoved off to boarding school, most service children have the choice of either local or base schools I don’t believe it’s ever for their own good, unless life at home is dangerous or inappropriate.

Under 12 should be a never

He has had a variety of low paid jobs like gardening, decorating etc

Good for him. At least he has been working and in fact our gardener and decorator are not low paid, nor are any I know!

When I went to a small boarding school with only 54 pupils, headmistress was a good teacher and strong personality who struggled to keep her business afloat and the other teaching was generally below par. I suppose during the late 1940s it was hard to find permanent teachers as the fighting services took able young people. Educationally I'd have done better at my local authority Sottish secondary school.

Emotionally I was okay as I made a few friends and I loved the place itself, the countryside, and the old house. At the time as a senior girl I felt sorry for the small kids in kindergarten, but I am sure the matrons and teachers were kind to them.

I think boarding schools are better inspected nowadays. I agree eight is generally too young to be sent away to board unless the home conditions are even more unhappy for the young child.