Chiming in here…as others have said, there are are myriad of reasons for choosing BS and it’s not always because the child is asking to go. And I would guess, that despite how confident a family or child may be in his/her readiness for boardings school, no 14 (or 15 or 16) year old is truly ready. BS are built for this growth, especially the ones that don’t take the sink or swim approach. I can now say this confidently with kiddo1’s first year under her belt.
We chose/choose BS because we don’t have great local options. So it has been our choice, not our kiddos’ choice. It turns out, Kiddo1 was not ready. She was mature, she was smart, she was excited for challenging courses, but she struggled. A lot. She’d call asking how to use the laundry machine (despite having her do her laundry the previous summer), and how to place an online order with her credit card, and how to talk to the head of her extra curricular when he said there wasn’t room for her, and the list goes on. But now, in her second year, the calls are less about “how do I do this” and more about "this happened and this is how I approached/fixed it ". This week, she called frantically because she’s run out of contact lenses. We have been trying to get her to wear contact lenses for years, and she’s been reluctant, so she only has that one trial pack. She was finally ready to wear them, and woke up early every morning to put them in and figured it out on her own.
Every day, these kids are learning how to do things on their own. And your kids, however ready they are, or not, will figure it out too. It’s pretty incredible to watch the transformation.