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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