I’ve spent some time reading through the classic Negative reactions regarding child attending BS thread. It’s a fascinating archive; it started close to 16 years ago, and the conversation wrapped up a full decade ago.
With over 500 posts, that discussion clearly resonated deeply with folks, and I’m curious to see how the landscape has shifted…or if it hasn’t.
DS is heading off to boarding school this coming fall. We live in an area where high-end private day schools are the “norm” and the expected path. Our children have been in the private system since preschool, so while our peer group and friends value private education, the move to boarding is still viewed by many as an outlier or even an “extreme” choice.
I’ve noticed a mix of curiosity and the occasional “Why would you send them away?” subtext. I’m interested in hearing from the current crop of parents (Class of 2026-2030) and the old guard to see if things have changed.
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Has the “stigma” changed? In a post-pandemic, highly-connected world, do people still view boarding school as a “loss” of the child, or is it seen more as a specialized opportunity?
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Day School vs. Boarding: For those in regions where elite day schools are the default, how do you handle the conversation with friends who feel your choice is a “vote of no confidence” in the local options?
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Friendship Dynamics: The old thread mentioned parents “losing” their local social circles once their child left. For those currently in the thick of it, have you found this to be true, or has technology made it easier to stay integrated?
I’m looking forward to hearing fresh perspectives on navigating the social side of this transition in 2026.
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I’m a parent of a D30 heading to boarding school this fall as well, for 9th grade. Most of the kids in her private K-8 go to private day high schools, although some go to well-regarded local public high schools. Among our wider social circles (like former professional colleagues, “former” because we recently mostly retired), more of their kids go to publics, but some private day, and pretty much no one else we know has done boarding (although we wouldn’t always know either way with more casual acquaintances).
So far I can’t think of any notable negative reactions at all to what our D30 is doing, not that I noticed at least. Maybe it makes a difference she got a large scholarship. Maybe it helps that people who know her, and us, know this was very much her decision. But I kinda feel like at least in our school community, people don’t really tend to critique each other’s school choices in that fashion. Maybe that is in part because as a standalone K-8, everyone goes somewhere different for HS. It is a pretty mobile population too (lots of eds and meds and such), so people sometimes just leave the area anyway.
So this is just a somewhat unusual variation on an otherwise consistent theme. Kinda like when a kid from S24’s HS would go to a university outside the US–that wasn’t common, but not shocking either, just interesting.
Socially, to be honest we mostly lost touch with the parents we knew through S24’s K-8 when he moved just to his private day HS in the area. Even the parents of other kids who went to the same HS–it they didn’t stay close with our S24, and didn’t do the same activities, we would be friendly when we crossed paths, but really not see them much.
And then the same thing happened with the HS parents we knew when he went to college. So I assume the same will be mostly true with the parents we know through D30.
I don’t think of that particularly negatively, though. Like I think these sorts of relationships you have as parents of kids in the same school are by nature likely to be limited in scope in this way. But that doesn’t make them any less valuable to me within that scope.
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Most of the students in our PK-8 go to private day schools. Very few go to boarding, as my kid chose to. The non-positive reactions are rarely around boarding as a concept, but more like “I don’t want my kid away from me any sooner than possible.”
Oddly, when we answer the “Where is your daughter going?” question, the response is always “Whoa. That’s and awesome place,” in a “Well, of course; I mean, that makes sense” kind of way.
And yet they wouldn’t put that card on the table for their kid. Odd to me. Full disclosure; where we live in Greater Boston, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a top Private Day, so its not like they lack choices.
Upshot is, in my experience any less than positive reactions are mostly about the parents, not the kid or schools.
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Ah, yes, makes sense. I have to imagine there is a better understanding in the Boston area. I grew up in rural Ohio and now live on the West Coast. Boarding school for my friends and me was very uncommon, and most had never heard of any school beyond Andover and Exeter (and even that was rare).
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Just had this conversation again. A parent of one of my S24’s private day high school friends is also a parent of a D30 at that institution’s middle school, and our D30’s middle school team was playing her D30’s team. We had a friendly chat about how the respective kids were doing, and when she asked whether our D30 was coming to that high school like our S24 had done, we explained about the boarding school and the scholarship.
As usual, it was a very positive conversation. But I do think mentioning the scholarship seems to make it an easy explanation.
So I’m wondering for all of you navigating this now… Do you talk about the benefits of living “in real life” with your friends vs virtually via social media?
When DS was starting at BS, social media was just starting to heat up, and we were all learning about things like cyber-bullying, etc. That was over a decade ago, and we’ve all learned a thing or two since then! Now, I know at the BS he attended, rules about phones have become quite restrictive. The kids themselves report how much less stress they feel when they spend less time with their phones, and the community is very strong and engaged. This, imho, is a huge benefit of BS - making it easy for kids to socialize in person - and I’m curious whether this matters to current parents.
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No. But it’s a great point.
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So our S24 managed to have a really solid group of real world friends at his day school, and he continues to see them on breaks back home, and he also has found the same in college.
But yes, with D30 I am a bit more worried about how that might turn out for her, including just by seeing the difference between her social habits in middle school versus S24’s. And that is in fact one of my hopes for her boarding school experience, including as enforced by their phone policy, that she will end up better developing those sorts of social habits, and then voluntarily continue them in college and beyond.
I’ve talked about that a bit with D30, but not a lot. My big priority was just making sure she understood the phone policy and was fine with it.
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So much of this depends on the dynamics in your particular region and the proportion of students who are going to a boarding school. In some communities (especially outside of the Northeast), there is still stigma attached to boarding schools–even well known ones. If the child is going to a boarding school for a specific reason (e.g., music, sports, dance), then there is a much better explanation to others in your community, but if not you should prepare for skepticism and judgement. So if you send a tennis star to IMG, people will understand; if a child leaves for no particular reason and there are good options in your town, then there will be more questions. The less familiarity that your community has with boarding schools, the less accepting they are in most circumstances.
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OR- you just live in a community where most people mind their own business, don’t weigh in on other people’s choices, and assume that adults and kids generally make educational decisions with knowledge and research.
Honestly- who is “less accepting” of another family’s choices??? Unless those choices endanger other people, who cares???
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Random note, but we just did 8th grade graduation (a big deal in our K-8), and as the kids were getting their diplomas, the school announced where they were going for HS. Not surprisingly give the school’s history, most of the kids were going to local private day schools, and a couple to local good public high schools. But more kids than usual were going to boarding schools, including one I didn’t know about before graduation (which in a class of I believe 29 kids, is not a small addition).
No really important takeaways, other than for whatever reason, this 8th grade class seemed to be reinforcing among each other at least seriously considering boarding schools.
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Public school parent and product of public schools here.
What is it that you want your kids to get out of boarding school?
As another poster mentioned if there is a need the kid has that is being fulfilled at the boarding school I can understand it better, but otherwise it seems like buying a high end vehicle when a regular car would do just fine.
It would absolutely have been a very extremely wrong fit for my kids (anxiety diagnoses), but I have adult friends who did Science & Math boarding school and it was good for them because their local schools could not meed their science & math needs.
I had another friend who went to boarding school to get away from her mom. When our kids were little I asked her how she would feel if her daughter wanted to go to boarding school and she said she would feel like she failed as a parent. I guess she felt like her mom failed as a parent since she wanted to go. They did not have a good relationship.
My general perception of places like Andover and Exeter and Woodberry and Episcopal is a place to make connections for a future in business.
All that said, I’m not really judgy about this stuff, but you asked. In general I would just mind my own beeswax.
It’s possible that people with negative reactions just feel that way because their only personal contacts or experiences with boarding school happened to be negative ones, or as a reaction to poor family life?
For example, I have an adult single mom friend who sent her son to boarding school because they were constantly fighting at home, and she was happy to have him not at home any more. I have another adult friend who had gone to boarding school because she could not get along with her mom, and the stories that she tells about boarding school would put anyone off sending their kids to boarding school! 
I am sure that boarding school can be a wonderfully positive experience if it fits the child and family, so I would never judge someone for it and would mostly be curious about it. I can’t imagine sending my own kids away for boarding school, though! It has been so wonderful having my teenagers at home and now that D26 is graduating I will miss her so much!
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My kid graduates next week from 8th grade, also a big deal in their private K-8. I admit to being a bit horrified that they would announce where the kids are going to high school. (They won’t.) Many of the kids found the process of choosing a high school stressful and many didn’t get to go to their school of choice either for financial reasons, or they were rejected. They have the rest of their lives to experience the “real world”, and I jfeel like the day should be a celebration of the general accomplishment of all. I understand your statement wasn’t an opinion-good or bad- of the practice, I was just compelled to comment.
That being said, only one graduate will be attending boarding school, though slightly less than 1/3 of the class will be attending local boarding schools as day students.
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So at least in our school, the vibe was very celebratory. I assume some kids might not have gotten admitted to their first choices, but there was no particular way of telling that. In general, I don’t think there is a sense of better/worse, just different choices for different kids.
But I think a lot of that is contingent on both the school culture and the local culture. I could see it not being a good idea in other schools.
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Other people’s judgments of us are external, not in our power, and the only real choice is how we respond to them
We don’t all pick our communities and/or our families. Some people will find this judgement from their communities to be an issue; others will face less scrutiny of their choices; others won’t be bothered by it.
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In the Midwest suburb where we live, both the public schools and private day schools are strong (both academically and in terms of sports), and there is a robust program for advanced STEM students hosted by the nearby flagship university. Boarding schools are not a common choice at all. The cases people know about are almost always therapeutic boarding schools for kids with mental health or behavioral problems, or situations of family turmoil. So people sometimes assume that’s the reason. The few families who do send their kids to famous name boarding schools seem to be transplants from the East coast, and it’s assumed they are doing it to tap into the social networks of the areas they came from.
It seems that is the case for the majority of the US outside the East Coast.
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Lol. This was my mom! In fact, based on a friend’s son who attended L’ville, she was pretty sure that most of the kids there were “bad apples”. She wasn’t particularly interested in facts…
This is funny.
I remember when I came home for vacation one time, one of my neighbors, who was a good friend, asked, “So what happened. I heard your parents sent you away.”
I was like; “Its the best school in the country!”
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