Leaving Home at 8 - TV programme Channel 4

Sunshine12

Am posting this prior to watching - mainly to see if I change my opinion afterwards.

I have to say at the moment that I dont understand anyone sending their child to boarding school at the age of 8. IMO, they are still so young and need their parents around them.

I dont yet have any children (currently trying) but the idea of it, even to benefit their education, is very alien to me.

Is anyone watching or watched it already?

HappyMJ

You mean leaving home at 8....http://www.channel4.com/programmes/leaving-home-at-8

Sunshine12

HappyMJ wrote: »

You mean leaving home at 8....http://www.channel4.com/programmes/leaving-home-at-8

Oops. Thanks for that!!:D

pigpen

I know someone who was sent to boarding school at 5. His mother never wanted him and made it quite clear from the off. He has a LOT of issues.

I want to send myself to boarding school lol

Sunshine12

Just realised there is already a thread on DT on this. Searched and never came up!!

I could never send my kids to boarding school. If we can have any (hope so!) I would definately send them to private secondary school if we can afford it but definately not boarding school. Just doesnt seem right to me.

fernliebee

I also could never send my children to boarding school. IMO most of a child's education should come from home anyway. I always think this about schools which take children from 4.5 as boarders, makes me tearful to think about leaving my daughter for a whole day, never mind a week or a term at a time.

My dad went to a grammar school and he decided he wanted to board for a few terms but it was his decision and he was older about 13. Didn't last very long though, and he went back to being a day boy

dizziblonde

I thought similar until I worked at a boarding school - saw how close-knit the community was, and how the staff cared about the kids and what was provided for them (think we took boarders from about 8 ish but they were rare that young). Lots of the uk-based kids we had were weekly boarders who went home on a Friday evening, or people who'd been moved overseas for work but wanted to maintain a UK-based education and some form of continuity for their kids - lots of situations like that, plus a lot of foreign students whose parents wanted an English education for them (mostly older kids)... it was nowhere near what I'd imagined and since then I'm nowhere near as anti-it as I used to be.

It's hard to verbally describe what kind of a place it was - but it had a very special feeling in terms of a school and particularly among the boarding part of the community - although it was a faith school (Quaker believe it or not) which I think makes a great deal of difference too.

Penny_Watcher

I didn't see the programme, but my Dad was sent away to boarding school at 8 and it's left him with lifelong issues of being rejected by his family as a child. Both his younger and older sisters were allowed to be day pupils at a local girls boarding school, but Dad was sent many, many miles away to school.

I'd have never, ever sent my primary age children to boarding school.

lostinrates

I boarded from 8 or nine. I didn't love it but didn't hate it.

For those with unsettled family life...perhaps parents who travel for work, or are in unconventional careers with unconventional demands/timetables, or even ''just'' emotionally unsettled, boarding can be a refuge of stability, home is always ''home'' and preferred, but school can offer that ''same'' ness that allows one to gauge things by something static. For a period of my life home was somewhere different every holidays..school was always school.

A lot of my peers had unstable environments at home, and for them school was pretty welcome.

It also depends on the individual. One of my nieces was DESPERATE to board, and has done since earliest opportunity, her sister no so much. As a result sister went in to boarding much older and only weekly boards now, and I can't see her ever deciding to do otherwise.

kendalls_cave

I was sent to a special needs boarding school at 7 and it was a damn sight better than what I was experiencing at home.
we were all put in little "home groups" so had the same care staff and peers around us. I did alot more at boarding school than I would ever have done at home full time

onlyroz

Our local boarding school says that day-pupils often ask to become boarders.