MK forum

My husband says that boarding school was great AS A TEEN. So, he would agree with you that it meets a real need for teens who are needing peer interaction and group identity.

Too bad the idea is applied to children as young as five. (That's the age his middle brother was sent to boarding school. ) XP (that's a "yuck" face)

Yes it met a need--but there were so many unmet needs at boarding school, that I still think it's a bad option. Going away gave me space, but frankly 500 km was a little too much. Mom and I never again reached best friend status from the time I went to Via until this last year. That's 26 years--we never talked freely about dating ever again, Dad never had to give me a curfew because I was never home again. They didn't teach me how to drive, my fiancé did that. I went through my first job alone. Now that my daughter is 16 I value going through all of this with her, so, so much. I taught her to drive, and survived. She's at her first real job, and when she comes home we'll comb through her day together. Processing new experiences--if I sense a vulnerability we can address it right away--to think that she could share with me snail-mail is ludicrous. Not having this time with parents to process the world together opens up a huge need in a child which is tragically clear to pedophiles. You're on the right track shadowspring.

Allbetter, I am so happy you have a real relationship with your teenager.

Your story ripped my heart out. It appears to me now how damaging boarding school is/was to the parent-child relationship as a whole, so that now I am unsure about boarding school for teens as well.

My husband has told me that he could not talk to his parents about anything. They never talked about his day, his friends, what he might like or why. Everything was always religion, all the time. He was told what to think; he was never asked what he might think. There were no open questions. Everything had one right answer and his parents assumed that would be his answer so why talk?

And as for what he might feel? Feelings were not allowed. Feelings were never discussed. Ever.

I talk to my children all the time. I hope that things open up more between my husband and our children. They are very compassionate people, my children, and they will accept any attempt at building rapport, no matter how clumsy.

It's just hard for their dad because he never had a healthy parent/child relationship. He doesn't know what one should say or feel, and as for authenticity, for most of their childhood he just felt numb. EMDR therapy is helping, but for years he was numb. Underneath the silence and passivity was a lot of hurt and anger, but that was never directed at our children- only me. He treated the children like age peers because that's the only way he knew how to relate to them. Sometimes that was okay, but they really could have used a father.

I guess like allbetter, by the time he was a teen, boarding school was better than the states at any rate. He felt less awkward in his missionary bubble; it was all he had ever known. But it ill prepared him for having a family of his own when he was an adult.

We were taught what to think, not how to think.

I am sorry that was your experience too, Sitting Duck.

We just finished reading Rob Bell's book Love Wins and that was my husband's favorite part about it. It asks all kinds of questions, but unlike any questions a fundamentalist book posed, none of them were setups for a dissertation on the "correct" answer.

There is just question after freedom-loving question, over and over; good questions that get reader's thinking, and if they have opportunity, talking.

It was a wonderful freeing experience for my man, and I was happy to see him enjoy it so much.