You, and the tens of thousads that agree with you 
. However there are some of us that find value in it.
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One lurking concern in the back of my head regarding BS is not about the amazing experience I am confident my DD will have. But rather, when they come home for breaks/summer how do they connect with kids back at home? Do they end up feeling left out and not having a community?
No one sent them off. They were dying to go. Just come back here on March 10th (decision day) and see how excited these kids are for the gift of this opportunity. As we always say here, we parents may miss a lot, but our kids miss nothing. It’s not about us, it’s about them. And, any student who decides BS is not for them can always come home. Few do. But, boarding school definitely is not for everyone, so you shouldn’t be defensive about making a different decision. Different strokes.
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Our son chose BS partly to escape the neighborhood kids here, so he was happy to enjoy his summers quietly at home with us and his cat. He kept up with his Boy Scout troop during the summers, but was happy for all the alone time otherwise. He really needed the break from the intensity of school. Summers were never long enough.
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I don’t know if its a boy/girl thing but the boys in our family just seem to pick up right where they left off with kids back home. The girls, on the other hand, were happy to leave and have no interest in reconnecting with people in town.
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Hard to tell with the pandemic.
Kiddo has a couple of friends that he keeps up with, and if it weren’t for the pandemic would have his summer swim coach job in the neighborhood. He also has reached out to a few former teachers.
But no doubt it is harder for kids to stay connected if they aren’t in the classroom together.
Note that some high schools also provide that as well. When my D was the right age to apply to boarding school, it was financially beyond our reach. She instead attended a rigorous public high school. She is now finishing up at UChicago, known for its rigor, and she finds it easier than high school. She knows plenty of kids from selective private schools. Many are thriving, and some not.
A few years later when my S was the right age, boarding school was readily affordable to due to changes in our finances. But at that point we didn’t see a benefit to us, and we were happy with the fine young man he was becoming. He is thriving in his first year at Harvard. Harvard is not known for rigor, but there are rigorous courses available to those that want them.
One of his friends in middle school went to Groton and is a classmate at Harvard. Another went to Exeter and is at MIT. He reports they are pretty much the same kids as before.
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Absolutely no doubt that there are many public and non-boarding privates that educate their students exceptionally well and prepare them excellently for their colleges. No one here disputes that. If we’d had one of those options at home, we never would have considered boarding school.
But, after four years of living away from home, navigating dorm/roommate challenges, being long past homesickness, and becoming travel pros, boarding school kids (and parents!) make that first-year transition to college effortlessly. That is just one facet of “hitting the ground running” that is quite valuable, though as @Calliemomofgirls commented upthread, it is not a reason to choose boarding school as all kids catch up eventually.
Kids thrive in many environments. Each family chooses what fits and benefits their kids. No one here would argue that any one environment or choice is better or worse than another.
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That is literally not true. Literally.
I “sent” my boys to BS no more than I’d “send” them to war. Both are choices made by independent and committed young people. Both are scary as heck to support as parents. But, both are cases in which parents put the wishes and will of their children above their own.
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I am going to quote it wrong, but somebody quoted on a thread somewhere here a statement from an AO they heard speak, answering the question “how do you know if bs is the right move for your child?” The answer was “if they seem like a tiger trapped in a cage”.
That fit my kid. The only reason he wasn’t the one who came up with the idea was he had no idea such a thing as bs existed. once he knew what bs was AND that we truly would be ok letting him go, there was no going back. It was a “need” thing not a “want” thing, and it was really obvious. Not at all the original plan, but none of the big life decisions ever really are. Thank goodness we were able to make it work financially.
He says there are a few of his old crowd that he thinks would fit a boarding school life, but most he thinks are better off at home. Some kids just need different things or need them on a different timeline.
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Depends on the kid. Depends on the parents.
People have the understandable misconception that bs means the kids completely leave their parents in the dust. Or that parents dump their kids at the gate, leaving tire tracks as they speed away.
Neither is true. At least not for us. I will be the first to admit I am missing out on stuff, but our relationship with our child is rock solid. I can’t imagine that it would be better if he were home. At the core of it, he knows we recognized he needed something different and sacrificed a lot to give him this opportunity. He respects that sacrifice and doesn’t take it for granted.
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The quote was given to me by a friend off of the board and I repeated it a few months ago. When an Andover recruiter was giving a presentation a few years ago to her and a group parents of high achieving kids, he answered the question “you know because your child looks like a caged lion at home/LPS.”
The “caged lion” description doesn’t fit D perfectly, although I would call her a fish out of water here. Your second paragraph describes her pretty well. Most of her knowledge of BS 7 months ago was from watching Harry Potter movies. She has no friends or family with BS experience. But when I presented it as an option and we looked into it deeper (a journey many of you followed and helped with, thank you again) she realized that she would be so much happier there.
I am excited and sad for M10. She is just excited. But I will be more sad if she stays. Not because I want her to leave, I would be fine if she lives with me until she gets married and then buys a house across the street. I will be sad because I truly believe she will be happier and develop into a better adult if she goes. Ultimately that’s the goal. I want to enjoy every minute with my kids I can. But I care more about what is best for them than best for me.
Also, I have 4 kids, she is the only one we considered this for. I think it is a mistake to shoehorn kids into a mold. I have discussed it elsewhere recently so won’t recount it here, but I have 4 who all took very different paths. Of course she is not making it easy on me, and will blaze her own trail too. Good for her.
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We discussed the “caged lion” thing before and I’m pretty I responded then – caged lion syndrome is one reason to go to BS.
And, perhaps it’s even a good description of the type of student who thrives at Andover? But caged lion is but one great BS-kid profile, and Andover is but one school.
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BS is about the experience, and the value of any experience is going to widely vary from one person to another. Furthermore, there is no mutually agreed upon measure of value for experiences.
With experiences, we all know which options are less expensive and which options take us out of our comfort zone. But the “value” of the options is not known…it is “judged.”
Why would a rational person run the NYC marathon? You can be just as healthy (or healthier) running that weekend at home. So why…
- spend years trying to get in through the lottery or thousands of dollars on a charity entry
- spend months training and desperately avoiding injury
- spend thousands of dollars spent on travel, lodging, meals, etc.
- get up at 3am, take a bus or ferry to the start and freeze with 40,000 other people for over an hour before the start
- run for hours in the rain and/or heat, feeling all sorts of pains that you never knew were possible
- finally cross the finish line, perhaps limping, and likely to not walk normal for the days to follow
So, why do it? The answer is…for the incredibly unique experience. But only those who value it will “get it” and just know why it’s valuable to them. It’s not “better” than the many great alternative ways to enjoy running on the very same weekend. But to some it is worth all cost(s) and effort, because it presents a value that they will always cherish.
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So why not BS? From the parents’ perspective-
- Losing kiddo 4 years early
- Financial burden except for those rich people or those with generous FA
- May not be a good fit for kiddo
- Exposure to troubling issues at an early age without parents’ help
- Lower chance to get in the best colleges
Did I miss anything?
I am with you on 1-3, but 4-5 not so much.
The same bad things happen everywhere, often without the parents knowing it, even though the kids live at home. Most bs parents are a car ride away and all are a text away. Physical proximity isn’t a measure of how much a parent is there for a kid.
There is a difference between saying you shouldn’t go to a boarding school expecting to get into an Ivy, vs that you have a lower chance to get into an Ivy by going to a bs. The issue does get debated a lot here. My take: Virtually no one is a sure thing for an Ivy. Getting into an Ivy is not the definition of success of a boarding school. But even if it were, the admissions rates to Ivies (and more so T20 schools overall) are much better than most other school options students have (the counter argument is that if kids stay home and were the big fish in the small pond of their lps, they would be a stand out that the Ivies couldn’t resist. It is impossible to know. Overall BS kids do just fine in the elite college admissions game because of the college counseling and resources/opportunities for self-development.
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I don’t think anyone is providing a counter-argument to #2 or #3. #2 applies to any private or catholic school. And #3 is exactly what the pro-BS agrument is. It depends on the kid. I have 4 kids, and they all took pretty different paths. I didn’t try to shoehorn the oldest 3 into BS, and I’m not trying to shoehorn the youngest into our LPS if I don’t have to. Help your kids get where they need to be if you can. I understand #2 can be an impediment to that.
#1 and #4 are also good reasons to homeschool. You definitely spend more time with your kid and have more control over the situations they face if you don’t let them go to school at all.
#5 is definitely true for me in my family’s circumstance, but I think generally the opposite is true. Not sure where that one is coming from. In my case we give up geographic diversity, and probably being able to sit at or near the top of the class. Of course, I’m pretty sure odds of success at the best colleges would be helped quite a bit by most boarding schools.
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@CateCAParent Agreed!
We didn’t “send” our kid away to boarding school. Boarding schools and private schools weren’t something our family had any experience with. But, our son pushed for private school and included boarding school in that search. He felt that boarding school was like sleepaway camp with work (and he still feels that way about college!) While we are in a different situation because we live close to the BS, I think sometimes we saw and had non-logistic conversations with our BS kid more in those years than our public school kid when she was in her high school years.
Some kids were pushed to BS by their families. Some of those kids stayed and thrived for all 4 years, some stayed and struggled through and some left early on.
Every kid and every family are different. BS is far from necessary for success.
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This is it. This is why DD decided to apply, too. There is the X factor (or ‘it’ factor as @CateCAParent called it) that is just there with BS students. For some it may be subtle, but for us it is glaring. And to see the difference when DS gets back amongst his old school friends-- it is even more evident.
If all else is equal among the education/academics/offerings of a LDS/LPS and BS, the one thing is the X factor. You cannot get it anywhere else.
@HMom16 I really can’t speak for DD yet, but I think it will be the absolute opposite in our family. DS will see his old friends but as a random, unscheduled run-into type of thing. Neither reach out to one another and although they follow each other on SM, they do not really “connect”. DD is more of the loyal extrovert, so I think she may do the picking up where she left off…we will have to see.
@altras…100%! It is a sacrifice we all made. Not just financially, but more so emotionally. It would have been extremely selfish for us to tell DS (and now DD) we would not allow him to go to BS. Both of my kids were in the driver’s seat for the app process, because this was their idea. I was a credit card number and an obligatory parent statement. Every time I regret being selfless, something happens to show me what an amazing sacrifice we made and how it was worth every minute of him being away from us.
@dadof4kids This fits my DD perfectly right now. She comes home every single day and rants about how she cannot WAIT to get out of her current situation. She even paces.
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@G07b10 - if you are looking for why nots…
6. Going away can compound mental health issues. Honestly assess where your kid is. Do they have tools in their toolbox to handle the 24/7 nature of BS? I think some parents/kids chose BS thinking it would magically cure some issues which of course it won’t. (Same w choosing a college, by the way. And, some day schools.)
I agree with your #2 and #3. We did not experience BS at all as (#1) losing kiddo 4 years early - our relationship grew and matured and we became closer than ever once logistical arguments were mostly out of the equation. Re #4 on your list - maybe, but let me assure you that public school and day school won’t solve that problem. And #5 may be true if you are solely looking ivy or bust. I don’t know. #5 like so much else, depends on the kid. Even the #6 I just added depends on the kid. It boils down to know your kid, know your self, know your financial situation.
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