Going off to Boarding school as eight year old girls

rafichagran

I have 2 adult children and I would not have sent them away to board, but I think people saying it is cruel are arrogant, my way is the only way type of people.
Some children love and enjoy boarding school and want to go, as Sago said her son did. I think it's dreadful that parents are called cruel because their parenting choices are different.

What if the alternative was for them to go to 10 or more schools and, as a result leave school semi-literate and innunerate with no paper qualifications?

A man I knew was sent to boarding school at age 7. In the holidays they paid a companion to take him abroad so he barely saw his parents.
I would have been heartbroken to send my children away.

I have 2 adult children and I would not have sent them away to board, but I think people saying it is cruel are arrogant, my way is the only way type of people.
Some children love and enjoy boarding school and want to go, as Sago said her son did. I think it's dreadful that parents are called cruel because their parenting choices are different.

My mum & her 2 sisters were born in India and were put in boarding school while their parents stayed in India.
My mum & middle sister went at 6 & 5 then youngest sister joined them when she was 5.
They were there for 6 years with, I think, one visit from parents and one from friends of their parents.
Sometimes they were invited to stay with a school friend in the holidays.
The food was terrible and not very much of it.
My mum had thought the ladies in charge looked jolly and nice but they weren't at all.

I went to BS when I was 8 in the 1960's. Boarding Schools were very different then, although the one that I initially went to, tried to be "homely" it never actually felt like home. I didn't hate it but neither did I particularly happy. To this day I can still feel tearful when I consider how lost I felt away from home at such a young age
Strangely though it also made me strong and able to cope even when times have been tough

Our children did not board, though they were sometimes jealous of those who did. I did not either. We and they were day students. That was best for our family, children's personalities.

I've never understood why the person who works away doesn't just live away, with the other parent staying home with the children for stability? However it matters not, doesn't impact my family.

I failed my 11+ so I was sent to a convent school as a boarder about 20 miles away in the 1950's. I have to admit that I was happy enough and came away with 5 reasonable O'levels, although not a maths to be seen! My mother and stepfather came to every event, whether I was participating or not. Weekends home were allowed every four weeks, letters, as many as you liked! Bicycles were allowed for senior girls when we were able to go into the town on Saturday mornings in twos!
We only had to wear school uniform during school hours, the rest of the time we wore our own clothes, except Sundays when we went to the local church, as opposed to the schools chapel during the week. My DH had parents abroad and boarded at 8! He was deeply unhappy particularly as younger siblings went with parents. Boarding can be a risk. If you like it it's fine, if you don't, it's a horror.

My father was a mining engineer in Vatakoula, Fiji.
I went off to boarding school in Brisbane aged eight. A group of us used to be flown over between terms.
Always felt like an exciting adventure. I loved the school and the teachers. If I had my time again I’d want the same again.
At age eleven we returned to the UK where I attended the local grammar school and had to live with a violent and cold mother while my wonderful father continued to work abroad.
I used to beg to go away to boarding school.
So I suppose it all depends on the school and on the home.

When my daughter was 8 we looked round a school which had flexi boarding. She was very keen to go but in the end she went to a day school. She was most disappointed. What that says about us I’m not sure. 😂

I went to BS at 8 years. Sink or swim it is indeed. But even those who swim have a heck of a lot going on under the water that they keep hidden!! I think probably for life in some cases, unless they recognise the impact of dealing with it at such a vulnerable age!

Boarding School Syndrome by Joy Schaverian is an interesting book as is the website Boarding School Survivors

My DIL was an army child. She went everywhere with her parents, Germany, Cyprus, Belfast and Gibraltar. She attended 12 different schools. Apart from having no long term childhood friends, she was not adversely affected and went to university and gained a good degree.
On the other hand her brother didn’t do so well at school and flunked his first year at Uni and left to do a tech job. Each child is different and parents will never know if they made the right decisions.

It has long been recognised for looked after children that residential care is not the best to meet their emotional needs, hence the huge growth in fostering (there are other reasons as well of course). And yet it seems we can ignore the emotional needs of young children sent to boarding school in search of ‘stability’ or a privileged education. I think it is inevitable they will be damaged in some way.

There is a lot of literature around ‘boarding school syndrome’ and its effects on later life, it has been described as ‘the trauma of privilege’. It explains a lot about many of those in government or positions of power.

I was surprised when my DS and DDiL put their babies into daycare so that they could go back to work. They had a mortgage to pay, careers to continue etc

Do you not think that we always manage to persuade ourselves that the way we did things was the right way?

After all, it hasn't done us any harm.

My father was in the forces and I went to boarding school at 12. Even at that age it was quite daunting, and I developed a superficial resilience, but I think has it affected me in some negative ways for the rest of my life.

I knew a man who had been at Winchester, as an older boy of course, and who hated it. As an adult he was emotionally stable and very able . His discontent with Winchester concerned forced religion and hypocrisy with undercurrents of bullying. However this was in the bad old days when deference to famous expensive schools was the customary attitude . Caring parents nowadays will listen to what their children say and thoroughly inspect all aspects of any fee paying school combined with healthy scepticism.

BlueBelle - I wasn't saying that "sink or swim" was how my husband felt (or how it should be). It was his observation of the whole system.

He cannot understand how anyone who has been through it would ever contemplate it for their children - yet many do.

The public attitude to BS has changed completely over the decades. When I was there in 1960s and I was already 15, friends from home were even envious of me. The popular girls comics and Enid Blyton had glamourised it.
Our school, which was probably unusual being a Quaker School so more liberal and less formal than say my brother's public boys school, took girls from age 11. We shared mixed age dormitories, known as bedrooms, and communal bathrooms.
One child I'll never forget, cried herself to sleep every night. When we tried to comfort her she said her parents - new stepfather - wanted to be rid of her. Unfortunately, I fear she was right.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.