How long before the crying stops?

[ReallyMissingHer]

Hi

My daughter started this year and is enjoying CH. However, she is homesick and I am really really really missing her. When she phones we both end up crying, when I said goodbye to her on Sunday I was crying (she wasn't), she phoned a couple of days ago and again I end up crying.

Was anyone else as bad as this? How long before you got used to it? I'm worried she won't tell me if she has a bad day/week etc in case it upsets me but I am finding it so hard not to cry. Everyone out there seems so anti-boarding I think I am becoming paranoid about it all.

Please tell me how I feel isn't unusual and that it will improve (soon), or indeed if I'm a bit of a nutter and need to get a grip.

thanks

[J.R.]

This is very common.

I take it your daughter has joined in the junior year.

It will all depend on how quickly she forms close friendships.

Try to be strong when she phones, and try NOT to cry yourself but be VERY supportive and remind her it won't be long before you meet up again. Try discussing what you have planned for the 1/2 term break etc. (Something we didn't have the luxury of in my day - Just 3 1/2 day exeats a term).

I hope this helps a little.

[ReallyMissingHer]

Thank you for replying.

I think she is fine, enjoying it, and doing lots of extra sports (she is not "good" at sport but enjoys it) she is not asking to leave/come home/or howling down the phone. She says they are all homesick but she is the only one to admit it. She just misses us and when it's time to say bye we both crack! She likes the other girls, was full of enthusiasm to go back but perhaps we are just not cut out to be stiff upper lip?

I feel totally and utterly bereft. My daughter has always spent a lot of time away with me, with her Dad (we're divorced) but it is so different now she is at CH.

I want to be selfish and tell her not to phone - just text and email!

[J.R.]

I have sent you a private message.

[Katharine]

I think each child is different (so is each Mother!). I was brought up to expect to go to CH so it wasn't something suddenly thrust on me. I did the same with my sons, as we were working overseas ours started boarding at 8. It wasn't easy and I did cry, they don't admit now to having done it.

The elder one wasn't happy going back one time and I will always remember the Housemaster writing to say there would be something very wrong with home if school really was better in every way.

It may be that contact with you is making your daughter cry more, I hope she will soon get so involved in some activity that she enjoys that she doesn't have so much time to think of home and what she is missing there.

[englishangel]

Hi

My daughter started this year and is enjoying CH. However, she is homesick and I am really really really missing her. When she phones we both end up crying, when I said goodbye to her on Sunday I was crying (she wasn't), she phoned a couple of days ago and again I end up crying.

Was anyone else as bad as this? How long before you got used to it? I'm worried she won't tell me if she has a bad day/week etc in case it upsets me but I am finding it so hard not to cry. Everyone out there seems so anti-boarding I think I am becoming paranoid about it all.

Please tell me how I feel isn't unusual and that it will improve (soon), or indeed if I'm a bit of a nutter and need to get a grip.

thanks

Both I'm afraid

I have been the "shoulder to cry on" today for a colleague whose 19 year old has just gone back to Uni for her 2nd year. (Mine went back 2 weeks ago so I am over the worst. Yesterday my other colleague was the same, her second chiild had just gone to Uni for the first time. It gets easier as they get older but there is always a little pang. Just think how much you will have to talk about when she comes home next time. Just try to remember the names of all the people she mentions, she will probably give you a test.

[sejintenej]

Hi

Was anyone else as bad as this? How long before you got used to it? I'm worried she won't tell me if she has a bad day/week etc in case it upsets me but I am finding it so hard not to cry. Everyone out there seems so anti-boarding I think I am becoming paranoid about it all.

Please tell me how I feel isn't unusual and that it will improve (soon), or indeed if I'm a bit of a nutter and need to get a grip.

thanks

Hi, RMH

No two children (if I can use a non PC word) are the same; some pretend to be hard and "don't miss" their home and family whereas others take a very long time to get over the break. It took me far far longer to get over it than many others partly because I was thrust into a totally alien environment (with TV etc nowadays that strangeness will not occur unless perhaps your are Inuit). I suspect (and I am not qualified) that two of the elements are the closeness of the relationship between her and you and her ability to get totally and confidently involved in what is happening around her. Perhaps the fact that she is upset is a backhanded compliment to her home environment.

As for your own condition, it has been reported by a number of other mums - you are not alone by any means so perhaps you can consider yourself 100% "normal". "Nutter", "get a grip"; definitely not applicable.


Everyone out there seems so anti-boarding; forget "them". Do you think that your decision will be proven correct with the benefit of 10 years hindsight? If you think the answer will be yes then you have made the correct decision. See Druidic Law nº 1 below; in 10 years time will anyone have been harmed more than have benefited?

The balance of opinion amongst those OBs who contribute here is that the benefits outweight the negatives; that suggests that those in the know see nothing too wrong with the principle of boarding which is not to say that they do not see possible improvements)

[loringa]

I don't wish to appear unsympathetic because I'm not, however, I can't imagine it is helping your daughter to be bursting into tears on the telephone. You have (probably) made the right decision to send her to Christ's Hospital and are (again, probably) giving her the best opportunity to have a top quality education. From what you say she has adjusted well and is making the best of the opportunities offered. If you are missing her so much that you can't appear, in your own words, 'to get a grip' then you are probably correct in suggesting that you avoid telephoning her; it clearly isn't helping you and it won't be helping her. I think children worry about their parents almost as much as the parents worry about them in situations such as this and, if you can't appear strong on the telephone, then you should stop using it. However you determine to move ahead, you owe it to your daughter to put a good face on it, appear positive and cheerful and do everything in your power to avoid worrying her. It's two months since I've seen my daughter; it'll be another month until I see her again (if I'm lucky) but although she knows how much I miss her she thinks Daddy is having a lovely time on and we talk mainly about all the nice things we will do when I get home. Please feel free to tell me to mind my own business but the adult in these situations is actually of secondary importance compared with the child.

[ReallyMissingHer]

Loringa

I am not phoning my daughter she is phoning me. I have told her to text me instead to save her credit and I'm trying to send her notecards/emails several times per week so she knows I'm thinking of her and I always tell her that I'm fine.

It has been reassuring to find out that I am not the only parent who feels as strongly emotional about it as I do and I have been encouraged that yes it does improve.

Sorry I don't come from a functional family myself my parents couldn't wait to get rid of me and showed me no emoticion over anything so I find it very hard to work out what it is "normal" behaviour and what is more unique to me.

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Sorry I don't come from a functional family myself my parents couldn't wait to get rid of me and showed me no emoticion over anything so I find it very hard to work out what it is "normal" behaviour and what is more unique to me.

Hi RMH

I was intending to stay out of this because I didn't want to appear unsympathetic, but here goes ................

I am divorced and had shared custody of our two children, so have been accustomed to them not being in the house with me as much as I would have liked for many years. I think that this made it easier for me to deal with their actually leaving home when that time came, and therefore assumed that you might have found it easier than some other new CH parents to come home to an empty house.

Your later post supported my assumption that there might be issues at play here other than your daughter not being at home with you, and I wonder whether you aren't feeling that you have made the wrong decision, acted in her less than best interests, whatever.

Sorry, I'm losing the plot here. Haven't had breakfast yet.

You obviously have an open and loving relationship with your daughter, but I think that you can best serve her and your relationship by dealing with whatever issues you have regarding your relationship with your parents so that your daughter feels free to discuss any concerns or problems that she has with you, without her fear of adding to your distress.

I'm sure that you and your ex-husband thought long and hard about whether or not to offer your daughter the opportunity of a CH education, and I hope that you can soon stop punishing yourself with thoughts that you have abandoned her or sent her off to boarding school for selfish reasons. And, you know, it's not a life sentence - if she were to find life at CH unpleasant, she could always leave.

As to what are normal, correct or right emotions - whatever you are feeling is right and normal for you. Please don't criticise or punish yourself for not feeling how you think others feel, and please don't stop crying: it's a fantastic release and cleansing mechanism.

My mother rarely crys, but has chronic and morbidly high blood pressure, which is 'controlled' by high doses of drugs that have serious side effects which have caused damage to various parts of her body. I am convinced that if she let her emotions out, rather than bottling them up, she would have less need to poison herself with pharmaceuticals.

Hope you're already feeling better: take one day at a time, and don't forget to smile (and breathe)

Best wishes

Caroline

[jtaylor]

My view - I was personally EXTREMELY home-sick, even though I had my brother two years above. I remember hating it.
I do though remember my calm and supporting Mum on the other end of the phone.
I would suggest talking directly about your feelings to your daughter next time you're face-to-face.
Tell her you're missing her dreadfully, and that you find it really difficult to chat over the phone because of that, and don't want to upset her by bursting into tears. Ensure she knows not to worry about that, and that it's something that 20 minutes later you're OK again, and that you'll cope and get over it. Almost asking HER to support YOU in some strange way?
You could then follow-up any phone call with a text message a few minutes later, once you're less upset, reassuring her that you're OK?

Just my thoughts - no idea whether it would work or not, what the hell do I know anyway!

J

[englishangel]

A very nice answer JT. You can see it from the other side.

As we oldies have said, if we were homesick we just had to stick it out until the next holiday. The only time it really got to me was at the beginning of my second year, and again after the October holiday, I REALLY didn't want to go back and ran away when it was time to leave home to catch the train.

I didn't want to go back for Sixth form either, but that was lust, not homesickness.

[Sean]

Looking back through the mists of time I remember exactly what it was like to go to CH for me. My father had died when I was 6 months old so there was just mum and myself so we were pretty close back then.
I was horribly homesick in the first three weeks at school. My housemaster and the other boys in the house did all they could to help but at first it was truely horrible. Then, all of a sudden, I found that it was great fun to be at the school. I have no clear idea what changed but it did. My mum however did not, she was bad until the end of my first term.
New mums hang on in there, it will get better.

[Ajarn Philip]

I didn't want to go back for Sixth form either, but that was lust, not homesickness.

Hmm, now it's starting to get interesting! Do tell...

[englishangel]

I didn't want to go back for Sixth form either, but that was lust, not homesickness.

Hmm, now it's starting to get interesting! Do tell...

His name was Paul.

Use your imagination!!