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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