This is like asking a kid who can afford or has generous FA to go to Princeton, why he did didn’t go to community college and supplement with online courses.
The elite boarding schools give very generous FA, and some are need blind and meet full need. Many kids go for free. The socioeconomic diversity in these boarding schools is much broader than what you’d find in a local public or private school w enrollment from the local catchment area.
@JustOneDad: Before I worked at a boarding prep school, I wondered the same thing. All I knew of such schools was what I’d read in novels or seen in films. Once there, I found the reality to be very different. In a time where our local public schools are cutting their budgets and programs, these boarding schools offer amazing educational opportunities and life experiences. The community is made of incredibly diverse and engaging, bright kids who love being there and love to learn, and the adults are caring, dedicated professionals who provide the kids with a ‘safety net’ of a close, supportive community and plenty of structure and encouragement as they learn to step out of their comfort zones, try new things, and discover new passions. My kid was never an athlete in middle school, but at boarding school she found sports that she loves to participate in, and being part of those teams is just one of the many, many things that have enriched her life at school.
Did I “send my kid away”? no. She saw those opportunities and wanted them; she worked hard and earned her admission to boarding school. We are very close and I miss her tremendously. While letting her go at 14 was the hardest thing I have ever done, I don’t regret it. She is happy, thriving, challenged, and has an academic and social life she would not have had if she had stayed here in our rural area. Instead of being in school with the same group of kids from the same ten mile radius, she is living and learning with girls from all over the U.S., and many countries including France, Tunisia, Japan, Somalia, and Afghanistan. She has gained a wonderful global perspective and has learned so much. I am very, very grateful that she was given this opportunity. It is a personal choice, and for all of the boarding school parents I know, it is a huge sacrifice in so many ways… Not the least of which is having to be away from our kids. It is often hard to understand if you have not had an opportunity to visit and become familiar with the boarding school environment. For us, it was the right choice.
skieurope talked about exhausting the academic challenges. I asked about alternate sources of challenge. I don’t understand what that has to do with FA.
I should really just stay away from this conversation, but here I have to bite, the idea that community college, the land of the underachiever is the same as going to a school like Exeter is absurd. Just because the kids are older at the community college level does not mean they are the intellectual peers of the 14 year olds who earn admission to these schools. Many of these BS offer curriculum and facilities ( as pointed out by other posters) that rival liberal arts colleges, community college and on line or 3 week long summer CTY programs quite obviously do not. I do not think the words “academic challenge” and “community college” are often placed in the same sentence. And for the record, my kid has done CTY, and my family does not have a long BS tradition. I also laugh anytime someone suggests we have all “sent our children away at 14” take a look through the calender of one of these schools, they are home an awful lot, it is hardly as though we have “sent them” to prison. If you are really interested in the answer to your question and not judgment, which is an awful lot like what it sounds like, spend some time reading through this board or take a look at some of the websites of the schools. Different families make different decisions for different reasons, but a blanket statement like help me understand how you can send your kids away sounds a lot like thinly and not very well veiled judgment
@bajamm: Thanks for clarifying that this was a “moved” thread.
@JustOneDad: The answer to your question will vary from family to family, though there will be some common themes if you ask enough people.
But I am guessing that no reply will seem that valid to you based on your counter to skieurope’s response. He gave a reasonable, honest answer, and instead of saying “Okay, thanks.”, you replied with “But did you think of/try X first?”
Your original question is not a new one for many boarding school parents to hear, and like many who ask this question, it’s fairly dripping with judgement: “The kid is only with you for 18 years and then, they’re gone. Why would you send them away 2, 3, 4 years early during a formative time in their life?”
You may have well asked “How could you do this to your child?”
How would it go over if I posed the following question:
"I’m wondering if parents who have kids in crappy local public schools could help me understand why they do it?
Apologies if I come off as overly defensive. Understand that not so long ago, I was seated at a dinner party across from a woman who pretty much asked the same thing you have…but added (ever so tactfully, I might add): “I could never do that to my child.” I suspect she wanted to report me to DYFS.
Over the years, I’ve found that people who can only think of BS as “sending your child away” can be A) deaf to the feelings of families who go that route, and B) unable to accept/process/understand the reasons when given.
While I don’t really like Trisherella’s example in Post #3 (because who wants to be known as a “Baroness Schrader” after all…though she was pretty glamorous!), I do like the last bit: “Nothing wrong with either type, Daahling…”
I have no desire to send my child off to boarding school, but nonetheless, he is going. But I find the most interesting part of your question asking “why do people try to accelerate” their child, as if this is something one plans and tries to do! Kids accelerate themselves. Not all kids learn the same way or at the same rate and our system pretends that all 5 yo have the same learning needs. What do you do with a 5 yo reading adult level books? With a 6 yo reading algebra books on the side for fun? With a 7 yo whose birthday request is for a physics textbook? With an 8 yo cracking up as he reads Shakespeares comedies because he delights in the language and the puns and is dismayed he only just discovered them? Do you send that kid to school to “learn” how to add single digits 5 years after he taught himself the same thing? I have, quite honestly, done everything in my power to stop the massive acceleration and atypical learning speed of my son. Aside from preventing library trips or refusing internet access, I’m not sure I could have done more and still he pretty much knew everything in elementary school before starting K (some kids teach themselves to read as toddlers with no instruction), first audited a college course in elementary, and is going to boarding school because his current local college placement isn’t really academically challenging or ideal socially since he’s with kids 4-8 years older. Like most adolescents, he would like to spend time with adolescents, not only adults.
I have become convinced that boarding school will offer opportunities for growth in many areas beyond academics and I remain quite skeptical that he’ll be fully challenged academically, especially in the humanities. It will be better than a local college where the average ACT is way lower than what he’ll find in boarding school (although even his boarding school average ACT for seniors is lower than his score in 4th grade). It will offer opportunities for social growth, for increasing independence, and for development in music and sports more than I can offer at home with other kids’ needs, jobs, and far more logistical challenges than having everything on one campus. Mostly it will give him time to mature without needing to face career decisions, adults responsibilities, or financial pressures at an unusually early age. He wants to be a kid. His favorite part about school was always recess :), but he needs access to college level academics beyond AP level and no local high school offers this.
I think people choose boarding school for a variety of reasons. Ours are about academics . . . that it’s the least-worst solution we could find for a kid who simply doesn’t fit the system.
It has been a long time since I have posted here, but this seemed like a compelling thread, particularly in light of the call last night from DS who is an upper at Exeter and is picking his classes for next year. He wanted advice on which of two really compelling English electives he should make his first choice. The one exploring our human connection to the wilderness or the one exploring visions of utopia and dystopia in contemporary society and fiction. He is a math/ science kid who has blossomed in his 3 years away at boarding school to the point where he really loves all his subjects and the process or learning. Had he stayed with our LPS, which has good test scores and gets kids into reasonable college choices, he most likely may not have had the same growth. He would have learned to work the system, and maybe he would have come to really think and find enjoyment in lots of subjects but based on his friends who stayed local, probably not. BS, and Exeter in particular, were the right choice for him.
That does not mean BS is right for all kids, but for some it is the right choice. Some schools are better for some kids than others. Some kids walk sooner or later than others, some are potty trained sooner or later than others, some are ready for a real boy friend/. Girl friend sooner or later than others, some are ready for independence (or some verison of it) sooner or later than others. We think our job as parents is to kick our kids out, not keep them around, and DS was ready to take the first step out. The idea that 18 years is the magic number both potentially infantilizes the kid and probably over rates my importance in their life. The decision is about the kid, not me.
We realized that when he left it was probably, effectively, leaving our home forever, but that does not mean that he is gone from our lives, or vice versa. As someone pointed out in an earlier reply, at 15/ 16some of our grand parents were getting married and being independant. I had a great aunt (sister of my grand mother) who got on a boat in Germany at age 13, coming to the US to find some friends of relatives she had never met, to start a new life. She never saw or spoke to her parents again. Letters yes, but no real contact. I think my son, at the same age or older, is ready to live a distance away, but who is instantly in contact via phone, email or text. That does not mean it is right for all kids, but for some it is.
@JustOneDad I’m European. The concepts of dual enrollment and community college do not exist in my country and I did not consider online because I’m one of those people that learns better in a face-to-face environment.
a) We love driving eleventy billion hours so much, we figured we’d tour many boarding schools, driving home the same day of said tours so we didn’t have to pay for motel stays in addition to gas and tolls. Twice, btw, because two of our children have gone to bs.
b) We love writing essays (short and long) so much, we thought we’d take on writing approximately eight gazillion of them as part of the application process.
c) We wanted to torture our children with the need to write their own eight gazillion essays for the applications.
d) We felt there aren’t enough character building opportunities, so we thought we’d introduce them to the pain of rejections that have nothing to do with them personally–even though it feels so very personal–earlier than necessary.
e) We enjoy that sinking feeling in our bellies when we receive a call from the local school nurse so much, we thought we’d expand the fun by having those calls come long distance.
f) We particularly enjoy when something crucial (medication, key card, etc) is forgotten at the end of a long break, and we need to either lose a day driving it to them, or pay $50 to express mail it.
g) We love missing work days (and the paycheck dependent on them) for the above reasons.
h) We just love reassuring our youngest, special needs child as she sobs goodbye to her older sibs.
i) 123mama’s Husband particularly enjoys watching 123mama cry at the end of the summer each year.
j) Our primary reason is how much we enjoy being judged by friends, family, and strangers for personal decisions.
@SevenDad , thank you.
@JustOneDad: The decision to allow a child to attend boarding school is a personal one, unique within each family and to each child. The boarding schools themselves are as different in their approaches as colleges. Some of the reasons are common across the families who make this decision, primarily having to do with accessing opportunities and experiences that would otherwise be limited to nonexistent. Outside of that, again, different families have different factors influencing the decision. One thing is for certain, none of the boarding schools commonly discussed on this forum have anything to do with sending our children away, but everything to do with allowing them to go.
“One thing is for certain, none of the boarding schools commonly discussed on this forum have anything to do with sending our children away, but everything to do with allowing them to go.”
@123mamam: Preach!
I did that and that’s what generated my question in the first place.
BTW, if I felt I had a need to make a judgment, I’d be happy to make it. However, if I say, for example, that I didn’t do this or that with my kid it has nothing to do with your kid beyond what you make of it internally.
@JustOneDad: You don’t think that your statement/question: “The kid is only with you for 18 years and then, they’re gone. Why would you send them away 2, 3, 4 years early during a formative time in their life?” does not contain a hint of judgement nor could it be easily interpreted that way? Really?
If you feel the need to pose that question, I’d be happy to be one of the people answering it.
Can we just stick to the question at hand as opposed to the emotional assumptions, projection and personal attacks?
Aside from being wholly unnecessary, it actually diminishes what some of you are trying to say.
@JustOneDad, for myself, your above post is my point. Your question didn’t feel like an honest question, it felt like an attack/judgement. I speak only for my family, but it looks like I’m not the only one who read your OP with that interpretation. How a question is phrased, the words chosen, will determine the answer given.
As to your specific reference to 18 years and then they’re gone, our family doesn’t see it that way. Our children are every bit as much a part of our lives whether they’re at boarding school or college. My college senior and I still speak/Skype all the time, and see each other regularly. I don’t have any reason to believe that will change in June, either. Our children aren’t gone because of an age, or the type of school attended. In fact, you just reminded me of one boarding school visit and interview when we were looking for that college senior: We eliminated the school because of the AO’s surprise at our closeness, and respective positive things said about each other and our family in the separate child/parent interviews.
@Corcaigh Not only that, we are such workaholics that we plan to forego retirement and work into 90s too, that’s why we can afford the boarding schools.
One thing we lack in our neighborhood schools (in addition to academics, resources, motivated peers, etc) is diversity, both in ethnic and socio economic. We are always making choices for the places to live, to work, to send kids to school. For us, these places are not in one location and that is okay.
As a day student at a boarding school, I knew many boarding students who were sent there because the parents had gone there and the kids wanted to go there. Other kids were sent there to get away from a bad situation where they lived - mostly affluent African American and Hispanic males whose parents wanted them out of the big city and away from the negative influences of drugs and gangs. Before anyone comments that this is racist, politically incorrect, or whatever, please understand that it is also exactly why those kids were sent to boarding school. I’m just answering the question. But I’ve been on CC long enough to know that someone somehow is going to be offended. :-@
One answer to your original question (quote taken from a long multi-part post on our family’s search/application/matriculation process with older daughter):
“Local public schools do not align with our family values/expectations.”
Additionally, older daughter is advanced (though not as advanced as kaibab’s kid)…skipped a grade, JHU-CTY High Honors, etc. Starting in 5th grade, we chose to send our kids to a K-12 private day school about 1 hour away from home (and 1 hour from my work…do the math and that’s 2, 2, 2 hours in the car every morning). That school is all-girls, which older daughter was getting tired of, not free, and meant 2 hours in a car for the kids and 4 hours in a car (considering morning and evening runs) for my wife and I. Every day. We had considered using CTY (but didn’t really invest time or money in it due to shortcomings mentioned above) to supplement and even home-schooling. As for community college, this point is also touched on by others…is it a good fit for a 13 year old high achiever to be going to school with kids who would be, at the very least, 18+, and who may or may not be as motivated/academically strong? And who drives the kid there and back?
For younger daughter, different considerations, different schools under consideration. She is an elite (gosh I hate that word, but that’s what they call it) athlete in a niche sport and her BS allows excellent training opportunities (like working with the former national team coach) and of course, the possibility of scholastic competition (sport is not offered at local public school). She is competing in a national tournament this weekend…and missing some time from school. Public schools in our area are not as forgiving about missed days as some private schools are.
I could go on…
I want to echo the comment upthread that it’s not like we never see our kids…older girl was home for 3 straight weeks in March (long Spring Break this year). And we’ve been to more scholastic sports events for our younger girl than most of the local day parents at her school.
Many of us are not “sending” the kids to boarding school. Our children imagined the possibility for themselves and made it happen, with only limited parental assistance. We parents are letting them go because it is clearly better for them, even though it is worse for us.
Our son, the youngest of three, came to us about boarding school; we never even suggested the possibility. His two older sisters went to a great LPS. As previous posters have made clear, there are many reasons why boarding school is a superior option for a child during these formative years. In our son’s case, he was extraordinarily independent and a natural leader; he craved the ability to cut his own path. Additionally, he was (is) self-motivated; not in a million years would we have put ourselves in hock otherwise.
Our relationship with our son has always been exceptionally close. As a youngster, he battled through two years of cancer and so you can imagine how difficult it was to consider letting him out of our sight, much less send him across the country to a school in California. We made this decision and sacrifice because we love him and we knew (and he knew) that the greatest possibility for his growth and happiness was at boarding school. Those four years were everything we had hoped for and much more.
Coda: my wife, daughters and I have the most wonderful and tight relationship with our son, who is now 25. We could not ask for a better outcome. So much of what makes him who he is was given shape and substance at Thacher during those formative years.