Why you should not `dump` your baby in boarding school.

During a visit at my daughter’s school a few years ago, I was shocked to learn the school admitted children as young as age two as boarders.

Can you imagine a two-year-old baby in boarding school! I raised my concern with my daughter’s class teacher who admitted they had several toddlers as boarders at the school. He said some were not even a year-old!

The teacher told me some of those babies were in boarding school because they have busy parents.

Yes. Busy parents! “Some parents travel a lot and have less time to be with their children,” the teacher told me.

It is understandable that in today’s world, people need to work hard to earn a living, but we need to have limits. Some parents today are too busy with work, as they try to secure a better future for their children to the point that they no longer have a single minute to be with their children.

Well and good. But one wonders the kind of future these parents are trying to secure for their children if they don’t even have time to spend with them in the first place! In some families, a week could pass without children seeing one or both parents. 

These parents leave very early in the morning while the kids are still asleep and return when the children have gone to bed.

Parents need to balance work and family for not sparing time to spend with the children is equal to neglecting them. And many parents are doing so. Because they are too busy, others traveling every now and then, some parents are resorting to sending their children to boarding school at tender ages.

An age when child education specialists and psychologists say children need to be under the care of their parents. The age at which they need parental love the most. 

But here are parents who, like one school owner put it ‘dump’ their children in schools so they can be helped to take care of them by other people. Parents have no time to give love and care to their children anymore. They assign the job to total strangers. 

What they don’t ask themselves is how is it possible for a stranger to love and take good care of your child if you, the parent can not do so?

According to this school owner, some babies, are in boarding school as a result of relationship break-ups. “When relationships turn sour, the children are dumped in boarding school,” said the school owner, adding with a smile; “at least these parents want their children to get an education.”

What kind of education do stressed and sad children get when all they do is cry and brood over their ‘missing’ parents? Parents have since time immemorial been calling it quits but I never heard of any dumping their children as a result. I mean responsible parents.

One worker at the school told me the parents only get to see their children on visiting days once in every month. And not all parents have the time to visit every month though.

“You should see the way the children cry when parents leave,” the worker told me. So heart breaking!

I agree with the school head who refers to the act of sending babies to boarding school as ‘dumping’ the children. 

How on earth can a parent send such a young child to boarding school? Why choose work or whatever it is over your child? Well, I know we need to work to be able to provide for our children, but we also need to consider their welfare.

I have a two-year-old child and every time he rests on my lap when I return home from work, my mind usually goes to the poor kids in boarding school. I never forget the sight of a small baby crying at the school (a boarder), probably seeking for the attention and love of its caregiver who at that time was busy with other kids. You know, the way children do when they need their mothers’ attention! 

Know what happens when these children don’t get the love, attention and pampering they expect to get from a parent? Anger and frustration build up in them and the effects can be enormous later in life. Such children tend to lack love, care, and sympathy for others.

Experts discourage sending children to boarding school at an early age saying children need parental care as this is the basic elementary knowledge they need for proper psychological development and maturity.

A University of Dar es Salaam Early Childhood Education expert, Prof. Akundaeli Mbise was recently quoted as saying that sending children away denies them the basic right of continuous communication with their parents, which is the basis of their social, physical and intellectual stimulation before they are ready for an autonomous life in school.

“Admission into boarding school at an early age leads to poor emotional growth. Separating children under eight years from their parents makes the children frustrated emotionally,” says the psychologist. Most children, according to psychiatrists get stressed as a result and some end up becoming mentally ill, later in life.

Taking little children to boarding school detaches them from their families and psychiatrists say this could lead to the children abandoning their parents or having low attachment with them as adults.

“Losing parental warmth may lead to developing negative behaviour for lack of cooperation, low level of sympathy, exposure to bullying among children with nowhere to transfer the sense of stress, leading to fear and seeking revenge,” Prof. Mbise was quoted as saying.

Some psychiatrists recommended that the best time to take children to boarding school, if necessary is when they are in standard four. Most children are ten in standard four.

Experts have for a long time expressed concern over today’s parents’ busy schedules which leave them with no time for their children. As a result they say, parents fail to notice the malpractices their children engage in during their absence and due to lack of parental guidance.

This has been costing parents dearly in the long run as children turn into irresponsible adults. Some become drug addicts, prostitutes, you name it. 

“Children today are left to look after themselves because of the parents’ busy schedules and this is really costing us. People are abandoning their children,” says Yusta Ntibashima, Community Awareness Programme Manager for the Mwanza-based Kivulini Women’s Rights Organisation.

She says parents don’t have time to sit and talk with their children and only complain when things go wrong.

Parents whose babies are in boarding school need to reconsider their decision. No matter how much money you pay to your child’s school, just remember no one can provide your child with the parental love they need and deserve.

Children aged between nine months to five depending on the child and environment, are famous at temper tantrums. According to experts, toddlers tend to have temper tantrums because they have such strong emotions but can not express themselves the way that older children and adults do. They also throw tantrums to let others know that they are free and can do what they want.

This is a normal developmental milestone as toddlers explore to find out who they are, a stage experts say repeats itself in adolescence. Only parents can handle these tantrums better which is why children need to go through this stage with their parents.

Caregivers at school don’t have the time to deal with children as individuals. They don’t have time to give the small kids the love they deserve.  

I heard a story of a nursery teacher who scolded a child for soiling his shorts and angrily told him to go wash them. And such teachers are many.

Imagine leaving your child in the hands of such a teacher for months while ‘you make money!’ Or because you and your partner went separate ways? Why do this at the expense of the children’s happiness and future?

I strongly recommend that parents should only take older children to boarding school and only when necessary. We need to put our children first and not money or our careers/businesses. We need to sacrifice for our children even if it means quitting our jobs for our children’s sake. It’s high time the government banned admission of babies into boarding school!