<p>I am interested in hearing from people who have had a child board at a school close enough to home such that you could visit her/him on weekends to go out to dinner, and watch games and performances. How did your relationship with your child change? Does it still feel like your child has gone away to college? Do you still feel involved in her/his life? Do you think boarding close to home made your child more or less prone to homesickness?</p>
<p>There is actually a nice handful of private schools within commuting distance from our home, but our daughter does not like some of them. So, we've expanded our search to include a few schools a bit too far for daily commuting. Frankly, the whole idea of boarding is so new to her and to us, that we cannot imagine her going so far that we'd see her only on holidays. Her first 2 choices are schools close enough for day student status...But they are very selective, so she needs some back ups.</p>
<p>My concerns are only about missing each other and changing the family dynamics before she and we are ready for it. She is very mature for her age: already has excellent basic life skills, manages her time well despite a demanding schedule, never needs any prodding about homework, etc., and makes friends very easily. So as long as homesickness doesn't get the better of her, I think she will do just fine.</p>
<p>We are an hour away from our freshman son, who is at St. Andrew’s in Delaware. At that distance, we found it convenient to go to his soccer games this past fall and to get down for a meal maybe twice before Thanksgiving. We have not taken him home on any weekend other than the two “designated” breaks (though one of those fortunately fell around his birthday). Bringing him home more often than that would defeat the purpose of the residential community, yet if we had an overarching purpose, the distance makes it possible. We also had one of his international classmates here for Thanksgiving week, and the distance make it all just a bit easier. Our son has not been very communicative, but that seems to be common to new boys. We might have aggravated a touch of homesickness early on by seeing him “too soon”, but he seemed nicely adjusted by the time of Parents Weekend at the end of October. “Your mileage will vary”, as the saying goes, so our experience might not be yours. However, we think this arrangement is working out splendidly and are very grateful to be have gotten the opportunity. There are no day students at SAS, and that also has some impact on how this has shaken out. We are going to holiday events in a couple weeks, one of which will have him performing. </p>
<p>As to the nitty gritty – yes, he has gone away, and we have lost “him” in some meaningful ways. While he is fine at home on vacation, and our relationships seem normal, there is a profound difference in the feeling of separation for us here. It brings to mind the comments of Choatie Mom, I think it is, who has written poignantly about the independent child. You can find these with a good search of the forum. It is feeling very much like he’s “gone off”, not to college per se, but as a 15-year-old who is in another home, getting what we could never do for him at home. (Interesting how he will compare these “homes”, when he can get around to articulating that.) We are happy that he has these amazing opportunities that our nearish day schools would never have been able to provide, and that lets us bear the loss better, along with those sightings I’ve mentioned. Well, sorting out these thoughts is hard, and we’re having dinner now – thank you for pushing me towards writing this!</p>
<p>Dinner over! So, last thought. Perhaps this corresponds to your thinking and is a convenient echo chamber . . . but we were definitely looking at boarding schools for son that were going to be two hours or less from home. Admittedly, somebody has to travel on a plane to make a boarding school what you want it to be: diverse and cosmopolitan. And that made us nervous, a bit, about whether geographical diversity would sink the ship for our pretty good, but not outta sight, candidate. That he got into two great schools, and he could use that M10 to A10 month for evaluating the fit issue once again, well, we feel blessed. Totally understand your desire for a boarding school nearby, and can say it is good, just be careful that first month or so. And, just maybe, you should do some research to try and get a bead on whether the targeted schools do indeed take a reasonable number of kids from your “sending district”. The numbers may be public knowledge, or you might even ask directly. Good luck!</p>
<p>Another SAS family, about 2 hours’ drive from Middletown.</p>
<p>The only times we’ve been down to see our daughter other than the “official parents’ weekend” type breaks have been her winter birthday and two crew regattas last Spring. We intentionally didn’t visit before her Frosh Parents’ Weekend, partly out of scheduling, partly out of circumstance (lots of clean up needed at home after Irene), and partly out of NOT wanting to amplify into any homesickness (if there was any).</p>
<p>IMO, the proximity has benefits beyond the ability to drive down and back for a lunch, dinner, shopping trip, or sporting event.</p>
<p>One is that the drop offs and pick ups aren’t a two day hotel-stay required trip. Another is that while we don’t visit that frequently, knowing we could pop down there with relative ease gives some peace of mind.</p>
<p>Do I feel that my child has gone off to college? Not really…she still considers our house her “home” and for now spends most of her summer here. Do we feel less involved in her life? Yes, of course. Not seeing her every day is a big change, but now that we’re in the second year of the adventure, one that we’re more used to.</p>
<p>I missed her very much this week, post Thanksgiving break…so my wife, younger daughter, and I called her from the car today while running errands and had a great chat peppered with lots of laughter. As I’ve noted on other threads, communication with her is much improved this year vs. last year.</p>
<p>How much do we like the proximity? Let’s say that if our younger daughter goes to BS in the Fall of 2014, it will most likely be a school within a 2 hour drive. Now, if Thacher offered fencing and she was lucky enough to get admitted, that would be a very different story! ;-)</p>
<p>Charger and 7d, thank you very much for sharing your experiences. I do want to feel that I can be there in a heartbeat if necessary, and it’s good to hear that the change isn’t quite as dramatic as sending them off to college. I’m still hoping she gets into one of the really close by schools, so she can live at home, but I am getting used to the idea of boarding.</p>
<p>One of the nearby schools tells us that it would be easy to switch to boarding in future years, if she wants. That sounds like a kinder, gentler transition, than sending her to BS in 9th grade. Maybe that would be good for her, as it would make the college transition easier.</p>
<p>We are also close enough for her to be a 5-day boarder at Noble and Greenough in Dedham, MA, which could be a good option. This is primarily a day school, but a small percentage (10-20%?) board Monday through Friday. I think we could all handle that transition. My daughter loved it on our visit, and we parents were impressed as well.</p>
<p>My children are local boarders. It is nice to be able to take them out to lunch, or bring them home when they have the flu. Schools differ in their policies about weekends. Some weekends everyone must remain on campus. Students must file paperwork when they want to come home or visit friends.</p>
<p>Schools also differ in the weekend atmosphere. Some schools empty out on weekends, which is hard on the boarders. Other schools are active and full on weekends, which my children much prefer.</p>
<p>Our tour guide at one school had switched from being a day student to being a boarder. It seems like a nice option for someone who is interested in what boarding school has to offer without being ready to go away as a 9th grader.</p>
<p>My D’s school is 100% boarding. There’s a girl in her dorm who lives nearby and D said that she goes home nearly every weekend. Since everyone else is at school, she seems to feel like she’s missing out. In general, I’m not sure the 5-day boarding option is so great since I think the student would always feel split between two places.</p>
<p>I don’t advocate the kind of distance that we have (across the country) since it makes for a lot of inconvenience and there are a few events that we’ll miss out on that would be great to attend. However, I also don’t feel like our D has “left home” for good prematurely. I just don’t think it would be fair of us to anchor her here by doing some sort of hybrid arrangement if we were doing it JUST for our sake of not wanting to miss her too much. If that was something she wanted or needed then we would have made different choices.</p>
<p>My S didn’t mind coming home at first when he could (though that was probably just a couple weekends per semester plus the extended breaks) but his second semester he only came home for the long spring break.</p>
<p>The benefit was being able to be involved in helping out at the school. I went there a couple of times for a parents gardening and landscaping activity and didn’t even see him nor did he know I was on campus. I could see shows and sporting events, which was nice. But perhaps the nicest benefit to being nearby was that a regular UPS ground delivery at the regular rate was delivered the next day!</p>
<p>The proximity to campus was not a factor we placed any weight on going into the decision, but after experiencing it – even if it’s simply having the peace of mind that you have that flexibility to see one another without needing a plane ticket or suffering a major imposition – I think having my S at a nearby BS was one of the aspects of the BS experience (speaking strictly as a parent) that I was most grateful for. I don’t think it diminished the boarding experience for my S one bit and, from my perspective, it definitely enhanced it.</p>
<p>Echoing friendlymom’s point about the perception about a child leaving home prematurely, I have to say that when S went to BS the parent-child relationship flourished and matured. It seems counterintuitive (and I will allow that it may have more to do with a child’s particular developmental maturity and internal clock than being causally connected to attending BS) but the conversations and interactions with S were much more rewarding and interesting once he went to BS. I think it’s causally connected and that it stems from not being mired in old routines and relationship dynamics; it gives everyone a chance to step back and engage on parent-adolescent level, not a parent-infant or parent-child level. There’s a break in those patterns of conduct and communication PLUS there are opportunities for the child to prove to him/herself and to the parents that the child demands a certain degree of added respect for their developing maturity. In less stuffy terms, things got a lot more fun and interesting.</p>
<p>The difference between that and S going off to college was like night and day. The college move-in was definitely a big break. Communication is less frequent than it had been in BS. It’s clear that he has left the nest (albeit not financially!) There’s just no way that I can relate the going off to BS experience/relationship as an earlier version of the going off to college experience/relationship. They were two radically different events.</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for you thoughtful responses! I know that every kid is different, every family is different, but reading about your experiences is helping me tremendously to think more carefully about what we are doing. I hope that after March 10 we find ourselves with a few options to choose from. My daughter is growing up so quickly, and we parents’ thinking about boarding vs. day is also evolving. What seems the best choice now, might not be what feels best in March. Thanks again!</p>
<p>I live halfway across the country - so I can only “visit” twice a year on parent weekends. But having said that, I agree with the others in that our relationship has matured and flourished. I think I actually talk more to my D now then when she was at home. Facebook, Skype, text and phone. So I know more about what is going on in her life and her friend’s lives than I did before.</p>
<p>I do believe absence makes the heart grow fonder and makes us appreciate more what we have lost. I would do this again in a heartbeat (tough as it was to drive away from campus that first time). Good luck to you in March!</p>
<p>The other night we were skyping with DD and she was telling us about how they decorated their dorm for the holidays, then she brought her computer out to the common room to give us a virtual tour of the decorations. For some reason I found it all very sweet and touching - her excitement about what she and her friends had done, and her pride at showing us. Counterintuitively, I think there’s a celebration and appreciation of daily life between us that we wouldn’t necessarily have at home.</p>
<p>One of our primary considerations when S was narrowing down which BSs to apply to was that they be within 2 hours driving distance, for the most part. This was possible mainly because we are in the Northeast. But if we had a BS where S could have been commuter, that would have been the best of all worlds for us, to be honest. For our family, it did feel like S had gone away to college early, and it felt like a real loss at first, especially in our town where it is relatively rare for a child to attend BS. And family dynamics changed because our younger son became somewhat of an “only” child – but he really relished the extra attention.</p>
<p>Though S never came home unless the school was physically closed (his choice :)), we ended up visiting for his various sports events every season, probably every other Saturday. It was something we all looked forward to, and we got to meet other parents and get to know his friends, and have a quick bite to eat. Our S wasn’t the most communicative via phone, so we found this the best way to learn about the details of his life, if only for an hour on a Saturday afternoon. Another added benefit of being relatively close is that for longer breaks, S would sometimes bring one of his friends who lived farther away home with him. We loved getting to know his friends from around the world.</p>
<p>I will add that the college transition was VERY easy, both for my S and for the family. Looking back at the whole experience now, I can only say that for the right kind of independent child who will take advantage of the opportunities that BS can offer, it is a wonderful gift. I have a younger child for whom BS would not be a good fit, and regret for him that he won’t get a similar experience. Students who get to attend BS are fortunate indeed. And even better if you can also have some proximity – not so much for your child but for you – though this often is not possible. Either way, the teachers and coaches at BS really do become family, friends and mentors in a very special way. Both my husband and I did not know much about BSs prior to S attending, but I now know that it is an extremely unselfish and generous act to allow your child to leave the nest early, so that they might spread their wings. Can’t say enough positives about it.</p>
<p>“Family dynamics changed because our younger son became somewhat of an “only” child – but he really relished the extra attention.”</p>
<p>I’ve commented about this on other threads, but will reiterate here that not having to maintain two day school student schedules has been a benefit to both of our kids…not to mention a little easier on a day-to-day basis for my wife and me.</p>
<p>I’ll chime in as the parent of a young 9th grader who started boarding school this year about an hour and a half from home. In her (and our) mind, it’s a perfect distance, because we won’t be “popping in” unannounced, but we can attend concerts, orchestra events and special school events to which parents are invited. She has grown in independence (and height!) in the few months she’s been there, and in many ways she and I are closer, without the day-to-day tensions that inevitably occur with teen daughters and their moms (even those of us who get on really well, as a rule). I don’t know what she’s up to every minute of the day (thank goodness) and, with a little space and perspective she is more inclined to see me as a wise counsel. I’ve been so happy to see her spread her wings, and not feel she has to “check in” with my opinion on everything (which she was sometimes inclined to do at home). </p>
<p>Which is not to say it’s been unrelenting bliss every day… I miss her quite a lot, but I also have plenty of work and family matters to keep me busy; she, by contrast, misses me when she’s tired, or down, or… as it should be, imo. In the end, though we do feel she’s definitely “away”, we’re happy with the occasional extra visit, and though we don’t see her every weekend or during the week, it’s nice to know we can get there relatively easily in a pinch.</p>
<p>Friendlymom summed it up perfectly when she said, “…Counterintuitively, I think there’s a celebration and appreciation of daily life between us that we wouldn’t necessarily have at home.”</p>
<p>I envy the parents that are within easy driving distance to their child. </p>
<p>We are many, many time zones away from DS and really miss watching his athletic competitions. He called to inform that he is sick now w the flu, and we feel helpless that we can’t do much to help him. He sounded terrible on the phone. :-(</p>
<p>When S2 starts looking at BS options, proximity to family members will be something we weigh.</p>
<p>Oooh, sorry to hear that GMT. We also have proximity envy. While I’ve been able to catch some athletic competitions, Dad hasn’t and really misses it. I hate that I haven’t seen a concert in years. And the worst is when they are sick. </p>
<p>We didn’t really have any choice, but if we were in driving distance of a bs that fit our child well, that would definitely be a top priority. To me, that would mean no more than three hours away.</p>