<p>Has anyone had any experience with divorced parents having a fundamental disagreement over which school to send their child to? </p>
<p>Where the parents ended up turning to the courts to determine which school was in the child’s best interests?</p>
<p>How did things turn out?</p>
<p>Along the same lines, how often will a child who’s compelled to attend a school against his/ her wishes have a change of heart & realize that it was the right choice after all?</p>
<p>Mediation is still on-going, but I don’t know whether a consensus will come out of it. The question for both parents is how hard to fight when the court process will be so hard on everyone.</p>
<p>Lots of imponderables, with no easy answers. Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom.</p>
<p>I think the child should have a larger say over their next four years of school as opposed to who has custody, who wants custody, etc.
My parents are divorced, and the hardest thing has been who takes me on interviews? Who gets to visit the schools I may be attending?
Listen to the child, we occasionally have great opinions. :)</p>
<p>Agreed. However, I think you’ll find relatively few cases where the parents set no parameters at all around a decision as important as this. 13-14 is still quite young to be making a decision that has the potential to change the course of one’s life.</p>
<p>The problem here is that the parents disagree about how those parameters should be set – in other words, which schools are acceptable options and which are not. Needless to say, the child happens to be leaning in the direction of the one school that one of the parents finds unacceptable!</p>
<p>The only way a Board like this could help you and your spouse is if we knew each person’s argument for why he or she believes a particular School is the best match for the child’s profile. Lots of the adults on this site have experience with the strengths and weaknesses of different schools and which kids typically thrive at a particular institution. I understand your not wanting to share this information, not only because it’s personal but because it could give away your child’s identity to the School. Unfortunately, that also means our collective hands are tied where good advice is concerned.</p>
<p>I hope it works our for your child. I would think that he or she is aware of your strong disagreement, which means that one aim of the boarding school choice should be a loving environment where there is predictability and intimacy. Perhaps a School with fewer than 300 kids that has a family feel to it.</p>
<p>Our parents are divorced since we were 7, and ultimately our parents have let us feel like the decision was ours. We’ve talked with both parents about this almost non-stop since last summer. We had dinner the 4 of us,(my parents, my twin sister and I) in November when we talked through where we were applying. Our mom had taken us to the New England schools, and our dad took us to the schools closer to home. We’ve talked through every school with each parent and they have given us their input, but ultimately let us make choices within certain parameters. </p>
<p>We’re pretty lucky though. While we live with our mom most of the time, we still talk to our dad just about every day, (TG for cell phones.) And our parents still appear to get along, at least they don’t argue around us. They are both pretty laid-back, so what happens is pretty much just based on our schedules and our brother’s schedule. Neither makes a fuss that we know of.</p>
<p>My suggestion would be for you to act like adults, for your child’s sake, and talk through the decision the 3 of you. It’s an important decision, but with so many great schools out there, it shouldn’t be that hard to find one you can all agree on. No single school can make/break your child’s future. Try and go in with an open mind and consider all sides.</p>
<p>“The only way a Board like this could help you and your spouse is if we knew each person’s argument for why he or she believes a particular School is the best match for the child’s profile.”</p>
<p>I have to disagree w/ this statement. First, there’s the false assumption that I’m speaking about my own child. Second, my initial questions really don’t depend at all on the particulars of this case.</p>
<p>I simply asked if folks had come across a similar situation & how things had turned out. Of course, every situation is unique, but still I had hoped to learn something from the range of responses. But perhaps this scenario is, mercifully, even rarer than I had thought.</p>
<p>Re: Linds819’s point that there are many great schools out there – Very true, & the parents have in fact agreed on a number of schools. The problem once again is that one of the schools is only acceptable to one parent as a last resort.</p>
<p>My aunt’s case: 18 months in court; judge appointed an educational consult to advise him and appointed a guardian ad litum to evaluate family situation. </p>
<p>Judge ruled against the parent who was seeking sole educational custody and sent kid to school recommended by ed consultant. Family was put under jurisdiction of family adjudicator and largely banned from court. </p>
<p>Which was a great help; the parent who was constantly seeking sole custody or threatening court was cut off ( and lawyers lost their meal ticket) and limited to only joint custody.</p>
<p>Honestly, this is just a bad situation. Two parents at loggerheads and the kid caught in the middle. It seems clear to me that having a stranger decide (particularly one who maynot share either of your values and cannot know your kid as well as you) should be the alternative of last resort.</p>
<p>Also, depending on the court and the jurisdiction you’re in, you may find the wheels of justice move extremely slowly, so it’s theoretically possible that you may not get a decision until the child in question is halfway though high school.</p>
<p>Finally, without knowing the specific facts, my inclination is to say that if you absolutely cannot break this deadlock, the child gets to decide. Ultimately he or she is the person who ends up most effected by the decision. Forcing a choice upon a child that he does not want, and that one parent is also dead set against seems like a prescription for disaster. Not only will the child be resentful and unhappy, but the losing parent will be encouraging this resentment. </p>
<p>Of course, as others have pointed out, it’s hard giving advice in the abstract. If the underlying facts really do support the minority parent’s position and it is crystal clear that taking the child’s wishes into account will lead to disaster, I think every parent on this board would stand with the minority parent.</p>
<p>However, ultimately it’s hard to believe that the consequences of this choice are really that dire. Again we don’t know what choices you are wrestling with, but if it’s Andover vs. Exeter or Deerfield vs Choate, even the most ardent supporter of each school would concede that attending its rival is not a fate worse than death. Even if the choice is BS vs. public school or private day school, as long as parents do their best to be supportive, most kid can make the best of a less than ideal situation.</p>
<p>Thank you, prppd, for your thoughtful reply.</p>
<p>As you say, the consequences are unlikely to be dire. But at least from where I’m sitting, the differences between the schools are clear, and I can’t help but feel that this is one of those important inflection points in the child’s life.</p>
<p>Nutshell version: Three Tier 1 schools (acceptable to everyone) vs. One Tier 3 school (not acceptable to one parent).</p>
<p>In any event, we’ll see how things turn out.</p>
<p>But since there’s only a month between notification from the schools & notification to the schools, it seemed prudent to at least start thinking about all the contingencies.</p>
<p>If there are fewer than 2 successful app’s, then the problem is certainly solved!</p>
<p>In a bow to Harry Potter, perhaps the sorting hat needs to be used! Joking aside, what an unfortunate predicament. My guess is the child could be happy and successful at any of these schools in question unless he/she has a particular skill or strength that is better serviced by a particular program. This is less about the child’s needs than adults looking to exercise their control. I hope the child is happy at boarding school as it may be the best place to live 9 months of the year than constantly in the midst of this kind of power struggle.</p>