Why do you send your kids to boarding school?

Sue22
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 19:58:07 +0000

We’re very lucky to live in an area with both excellent day and boarding options as well as top-notch public schools… Although I wouldn’t hesitate to send our kids to the LPS if that’s what they wanted, they’ve all ended up in prep schools, some as boarders. The reasons we sent them to these schools are many and varied.

Two of my kids are bright kids with LDs. Because they perform at or above grade level they wouldn’t have received much in the way of services at their LPS. One is particularly uneven and because of the way the LPS is structured her weaknesses mean she would miss out on honors classes in her areas of strength. At her current school they can give her the support she needs while still allowing her to be in honors sections. While some disciplines are leveled there is great fluidity, meaning she could move up or down a level depending on her ability and needs, unlike the LPS where kids have a very hard time switching tracks.

One kids, who thought she didn’t have an artistic bone in her body, won a major state-level art award after being encouraged by her teacher. The only kids whose work is submitted from our LPS are the kids who self-identify as artists and who have taken many art classes.

Two of my kids are athletes. They were good at their sports, but not excellent. Neither would probably have played at the LPS, the state champs in their sport, beyond freshman year. Both played/will play at their prep schools for 4 years. The third child was pushed outside his comfort zone by the school’s athletic requirement, something I wholeheartedly endorsed.

One tried a new sport (not available at the LPS) freshman year. By senior year she was being recruited by colleges. She chose not to go that route but she could certainly have used her sport to either gain admission to a more competitive school without athletic scholarships, or to get very substantial money from one with them. Daily, rigorous, enjoyable exercise helped one slim down from a chunky adolescent to a strong but slim teen.

The upshot is that my non-athlete came out of HS feeling competent in his body and my athlete came out knowing she can produce art. Who knows where the third will find her strengths to be?

I always laugh at the old canard about LPSs providing diversity lacking at prep schools. One of the reasons we sent our kids to prep schools was to experience more diversity that they would in our economically, culturally and racially homogeneous community. 90% of the kids of color they would have encountered in the LPS would have been bused to town from the city anyway, and those kids largely stick to themselves. All three schools my kids attended were substantially more diverse that our LPSs. My D’s best friend from BS is AA. Not one of her friends from home is a person of color.

I also hear people claim that BS kids are somehow sheltered and don’t know how to advocate for themselves in the real world. Nothing could be further from the truth. My kids’ schools strongly encouraged them to advocate for their needs, and since they got to know their teachers well they never saw them as unapproachable. This has served my older kids well in college, where they are more proactive about seeking out help than many of their peers. They also learned early to budget, clean, do their own laundry, and get themselves up on time, skills some of their classmate seem to lack.

@TurnerT, I’m curious about something. You say your kids attended parochial schools. If your LPS was so great why did you take them out of the system? How is sending them to parochial school substantially different from sending kids to BS?