8 Reasons why Boarding School is a Good Choice for Difficult Kids
by Lucy Pritzker, IECA Associate Member (New Jersey)
1. Predictability
Boarding schools provide a predictable routine that is impossible to replicate at home. All difficult children, whether they suffer from an anxiety disorder, a mood disorder, Asperger’s, or ADHD, thrive on predictable routines. At boarding school, meals are served at a precise time each day, a delivery person brings the mail at the same time each day, and there are established routines that do not deviate because of a problem with a sibling, a next-door neighbor, or a parent’s work schedule. Boarding schools are organized to ensure predictability.
2. High Interest Activities
At boarding school, what happens after school is just as important as what happens in the classroom. Difficult kids tend to be less difficult when they are engaged in activities they really enjoy. School offerings include wilderness survival classes, competitive and non-competitive sports (from alpine skiing to yoga), fine arts, outdoor bread baking, blacksmithing, video game making, music lessons, go-karting, and more. In many schools, participation in sports or arts is mandatory, ensuring students are engaged for a large portion of the day in faculty-led structured activities. This also enables students with social issues to have an adult helping them navigate the social scene during non-academic time. At the right school, a student who has academic difficulties but excels on the field, spends a large part of the day happily engaged in activities in which he excels and succeeds.
3. Transitions
Parents and teachers of challenging kids note that activity changes (i.e., lunch to classroom, school to home, etc.) can be difficult. In boarding school, transitions are kept to a minimum because the campus and school community remain constant even though activities change. Students who may act out and refuse to go to school when at home, have no such trouble at boarding school because their dorm parent is also their math teacher and also the adult at the breakfast table.
4. School Culture
At the right school, positive peer pressure can do wonders to turn opposition into eager participation. Different boarding schools have different cultures—some promote strong work ethic and community service, some breed a strong love of the outdoors, and others value intellectual pursuits above all else. The momentum of the school community pulls the outliers along and they enthusiastically get with the program.
5. Quality of Life
A short walk across the boarding school campus is a welcome change from the lengthy bus ride many special needs students must take to their day schools. At home, speech, tutoring, and physical and occupational therapies are the after-school activities of a special needs student. In boarding school, therapies are often integrated into the daily routine; while learning to whip up a great dessert, culinary students may be coached in appropriate peer interaction; running for dorm president becomes an activity a dorm parent guides a student through. And parents, too, benefit because they are no longer schedulers, chauffeurs, and activity directors
6. Physical Activity
Exercise has been proven to ease symptoms of ADHD and help with dysregulated behaviors. Boarding schools encourage, and often require, daily rigorous physical activity. Proximity to outdoor recreation, as well as on-campus facilities like rock walls, hockey rinks, fishing ponds and mountain bike trails, allow easy access to getting a kid’s heart rate up.
7. Small Class Size
Class size in boarding schools is intentionally small. In some schools there are as few as three or four students, allowing students with learning disabilities and/or slow processing speeds to get individualized attention and a learning pace they can manage. Traditional boarding schools keep class sizes to 12 or less. A difficult student finds themselves with much more (positive) adult interaction and can’t fall through the cracks in small classes.
8. Independence
Difficult kids have a tendency to rely on caregivers to get through their day. At boarding school, systems are in place that allow students to function more independently. For instance, a student who is always forgetting her homework may rely on mom to make sure it is in the backpack every day. Boarding schools geared toward kids with executive functioning problems start off by keeping books and assignments both in the school room and in the dorm. The student (and parent) no longer has to make sure information gets from point A to point B. Slowly the student in trained to ensure his homework gets to the teacher. Relying on the school’s internal system rather than a parent ensures greater independence. The move toward independence is a crucial developmental step that easily gets tossed aside in a busy family. At home, these kids become more and more dependent as they get older, rather than acquiring the developmentally appropriate independence they gain at boarding school.
Lucy is not only an independent educational consultant, an educator, and a mental health professional, but is also a mom of a special needs child who attends boarding school.
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Dear Lucy,
Even though I do not do boarding school placement, this was a most complete discussion and I learned a lot. It was also wonderful to meet you at our recent IECA New Jersey lunch group. So glad you have joined us.
with a smile,
Carolyn
Thank you, Carolyn. I’m glad you found the article helpful.
Looking forward to another lunch,
Lucy
Dear Lucy
Thank you for writing this article.
Your wrote in your first point that routine is impossible to replicate at home. I don’t agree. Many families that have hired a tutor/mentor/coach through my company have done so precisely to ensure that there is a maintained routine at home. While you are correct that parents and students are usually unable to maintain a routine themselves irrespective of their intention or claims otherwise, the introduction of another professional into the household, someone tasked with developing routines that can be maintained and coaching everyone how to do achieve this, is as productive as the routine established by a boarding school. Not only that, but this routine is established without breaking families apart and creating all the issues that result.
A full time private tutor whose role is defined in terms of responsibilities for extra-curricular and even vacation content is not an uncommon request for us. For example, a tutor of mine in CT at the moment is working with the family on what travel-activities the student might do next summer that are satisfy the requirements of therapists, college counselors, parents and the student. The likelihood is that the tutor will travel with the student too, ensuring the same routines that have kept him out of trouble since leaving residential programs. This same tutor is able to provide physical programs, appropriate social interaction with peers, highly personalized instruction (one on one), development of extra-curricular interests, and integrate therapies into the routine to establish the kind of quality of life and positive purpose that you describe above as only available from boarding schools.
A good tutor/coach/mentor can also develop independence in his or her charge, allowing them to take responsibility for increasing parts of their life, and with the constant vigilance, if sometimes from a distance, this lessens the risk of an unnoticed decline to previous bad habits.
The key quality that boarding schools provide that is much harder to achieve at home is the social interaction with other young people from whom the whole community learn and grow, and whose own shared paths to wellness are so very helpful for others who are struggling. Of course, even this is a double-edged sword, because everyone is different, and there is no way to fill a school with students who all have the same level of difficulty, thereby exposing some children to much worse behaviors than would be ideal.
I am not for a moment suggesting that full time private tutoring solutions could replace boarding schools — that is obviously incorrect. All I am saying is that boarding schools are not the only way that the 8 reasons you gave can be created, and what we provide is an alternative that works best for some families.
Regards
Adam
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Thank you Lucy for this solid overview of boarding schools. I don’t typically practice in this area, but have recently begun to appreciate the importance of knowing more, and you have helped out with that!