HOMETo Board or Not to Board
Sending your child away from home for more than a week or two can be daunting, so why would anyone choose to send their child away to boarding school?
Let's start by dispelling two predominant myths about boarding school: that they're elite institutions for highly affluent students or virtual prisons for seriously troubled kids. Neither is true.
Despite Hollywood 's portrayal of boarding schools as the realm of the privileged (or the next best thing to a correctional facility), such schools are few and far between. The vast majority of boarding schools are warm, welcoming communities with one goal: providing the best educational, emotional and experiential opportunities for your child - 24/7.
Boarding schools provide far more than a schedule of academic classes and a few extracurricular activities. By their very nature, they also provide an exhaustive range of developmental opportunities for your child, whether on the sports field, in the dorms, in and out of the classroom, or beyond.
Consider the Academic Advantage
If you're trying to decide whether boarding school is right for your child, it helps to consider the academic advantages so many parents cite as a determining factor in making the boarding school choice:
- Boarding school communities use traditional academic settings and hands-on experiences to provide constant intellectual stimulation for each child.
- Boarding schools have the resources (like daily study halls and extra help, one-on-one tutoring, writing centers and learning resource centers) to help academically struggling or under-motivated students realize their abilities and excel.
- Highly gifted students find that boarding school offers them the academic challenge and the intellectual variety they crave, including an extensive selection of advanced courses and extracurricular involvements.
It seems counter-intuitive to send your child away to school in order to advance his developmental growth (and if you're the parent of a teenager, you might worry that doing so will heighten any current tension the two of you are experiencing). Ironically, sometimes a little space - and a lot of positive structure and guidance - is the perfect solution:
- Children who are maturing "too quickly" or "too slowly" often thrive as a result of the social bonds they develop as part of a boarding community - a reward that also benefits the child's family.
- Boarding schools help students with special talents nurture those skills by providing them with the opportunity for more extensive - or intensive - involvement in specialized academic, arts or athletic programs.
- The boarding environment helps students build valuable personal skills by teaching them responsibility, independence and inter-dependence within a caring community framework.
- Students experiencing severe emotional or behavioral challenges in their current environment receive consistent, positive therapeutic support from qualified faculty and staff.
- Boarding schools offer a round-the-clock stability that can sometimes be lacking in today's hectic home life.
Involving your child in the boarding school decision is vital. After all, he/she is the one most affected by your choice and making the decision for him is the first step towards disaster. Regardless of the nature of the relationship you and your child share, asking his opinion about boarding school - and listening to it - will go a long way towards making the process a positive one all-round, especially if your child understands the reasons you are suggesting it as an alternative. By responding positively to each of your child's concerns and asking her to take an active role in the entire process (including researching schools when you're ready) will reinforce the fact that you only have his best interests in mind. What's more, it will also increase the likelihood of finding a boarding school in which your child with thrive.
Source List:
"Reasons for Boarding Schools," Advisory Service on Private Schools, www.asops.com/reasons.htm , accessed 3.5.05
"The Boarding School Advantage," The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS), www.schools.com/about/advantage.html, accessed 3.5.05
"Values Added: The Lifelong Returns of an Independent School Education," National Association of Independent Schools, www.nais.org/files/PDFs/NELSReport_2-3-04_FINAL.pdf, accessed 3.5.05
Woodbury, Lon. "Ten Common Mistakes Parents Make (In making residential placements)," www.strugglingteens.com/parents/tencommonmistakes.html accessed 3.5.05
