<p>My child attends a junior boarding school 700 miles away from home. He confided in his room mate about issues going on in our home (older son is a truant and smokes marijuana. We as a family are now in counseling). My son was reprimanded for not being on time for sports. His phone was taken away and the House Parent asked if he wanted to be like his brother. My son did not know where this came from. He said he felt like someone kicked him in the stomach. I spoke with the Director of Residential Life and requested a change of dorm and advisors. In my anger I was tempted to write the Headmaster about this incident, but anger is not logical. This is our first year at this school. Should I continue this conversation with the Director of Residential Life or contact the Headmaster?</p>
<p>I think it might depend on the response and/or action you are getting from the Residential Life office…unless they are not being understanding or helpful, I would give them a chance before escalating things. </p>
<p>The protocol is to start w your child’s advisor. If u still cannot resolve the issue w the facilitation of the advisor, THEN u escalate to the nxt level of authority. Don’t ever start complaining to the top first. </p>
<p>I think that as long as you get the change of dorm that sends a pretty strong message to the House Parent. Though I do think it odd that your son’s roommate would tell the Houseparent what your son told him. Boys of that age are pretty tight lipped and cover for each other. What I would do is confirm your conversations with the Director of Residential Life in writing. If there are any more issues then you have a record of what was agreed upon and why.</p>
<p>Not sure what the advisor has to do with it unless the Houseparent is also your son’s advisor. In that case I think you are right to ask for someone else. This person appears to be very unprofessional but it is the Director of Residential Life that should take the matter up with the Headmaster. Perhaps that should be suggested in your letter.</p>
<p>If I was in a similar situation at my kid’s school, I would have the advisor in the loop, just to have another advocate of the student involved. Even though they’re focused on the academic side, they have a strong personal relationship with their advisees. But this varies a lot depending on the school, and may or may not make sense here. </p>
<p>^^^
Agree, but OP said she also asked for a change of advisor. Unless the Houseparent is also the advisor this did not make sense to me.</p>
<p>My advice would be to work through your son and support him. Give him some things to say to the adult, such as “What you said makes me upset because my brother is essentially a good kid who is having trouble” or “What you said makes me feel…(whatever it is)…both angry and sad…and that it seems uncalled for…” “not sure what you were trying to say to me…”</p>
<p>This way you are helping your son process the issue and supporting him to be more competent to handle the next difficult situation.</p>
<p>In our limited experience (one kid graduated from prep school, one kid rising Junior); it has never been helpful to us contacting a headmaster or for that matter any admin staff in the two times we thought we had reason to.</p>
<p>Just as an aside, we had a situation with an old but esteemed teacher at our daughter’s BS, calling kids names, such as “poker face,” boys–“Nancy” etc. Although at one point, when it was an all boyz school it may have been acceptable, in today’s world, I don’t think name calling is what we expect from teacher’s in a classroom setting where you hope for mutual respect between teachers and students. </p>
<p>We did end up talking to a dean, but that wasn’t helpful. She ended up thinking her role was one of a mediator vs. calling a teacher on his inappropriate behavior. Eventually, we spoke to faculty dean who helped out and teacher apologized. When we asked to speak with the Headmaster, he didn’t even have the courtesy to speak or meet with us at our request. Headmasters you think would want to speak with parents…they don’t. (at least in our experience).</p>
<p>Good Luck, keep us posted. If you find something that helped, this is the kind of useful info valuable to us all. I’d like to hear about it. thanks!</p>
<p>This is a junior boarding school and that was a wholly inappropriate comment that also reveals some “gossipy” behavior between the roommate and the houseparent. All unprofessional. I’d let my concerns be known to the headmaster.</p>
<p>I get that it is a junior boarding school and an inappropriate comment. </p>
<p>Headmasters still avoid parents. If the OP has a good experience with the headmaster, please let us know. Even if the headmaster is responsive…doesn’t mean your next headmaster at BS will be too.</p>
<p>It’s good to have a variety of ways to handle the situation. Good Luck.</p>
<p>When was this statement made to your child? The original post was made on July 18th and school should have been out of session for 6 weeks or more at that point. So are you thinking of contacting the headmaster months after the incident happened?</p>