Parents:-  “13 Evils Of Boarding School, Why You Must Raise Your Children From Home”

-By Oba Samuel

A boarding house is no doubt has been a stop gap between busy parents and their Children. Children were raised by teachers who acts as housemasters while parents concentrate on their job, career or ministry.

Good as this may sound but there are lots of evils that boarding house does in the lives of Children unknown to many parents which is what this piece is set to reveal:

It Breaks The Family Bond: When a Child is sent to boarding school, the family bond between the Child and the parents is broken as the day-to-day experience that would have built a tie and create a fond memory in the mind of the Child is eliminated. Such a child will never be closely knitted with the Mum or Dad. This aid their strong ties with their peers than their parents.

Low self-esteem: Boarding house can also cause low self-esteem in a Child especially if the Child is bitter for being sent to a boarding school by the parents. This sadness may make such a Child hate everything in the school system which may develop into low self-esteem.

Threat To Sound Health: The unhygienic conditions of most boarding school environments posed a threat to the good living condition required for every Child.
Lots of boarding school have bad drainage system, rut toilet, broken soakaway, dirty water, bed bug infested mattresses and mosquitoes laden environments. This is one major reason, the sick bay is often busy and the number of hospitalised Children is always higher every term.

Leaving Home Too Early: Allowing your Children to leave home during their formative years is too early. Taking your child to boarding school at age 5,6,7,8,9,10-14 is like giving your baby to a nanny. Such a Child will miss all the family values and other home training that would have to distinguish the Child from his peers. When they leave too early, they cease to be your Child and they become societal Children because that is where they will get their training from.

Getting Independent Too Early: Parental dependency is what normally help parents to shape their children as they like but boarding school don’t give room for that. Which is the major reason negative influence easily prevail on them
Boarding school often expose the children to early maturity and independent which make them fall into a lot of mistakes in life. Growth is a process but boarding house often breaks this process.

Negative Influence: Boarding school is the easy ground for negative influences over innocent Children.
As a product of a boarding school, I have realised that there are many Children with bad habits in boarding schools who often infect the innocent ones with negative habits. Lots of wayward children from home always introduce their peers to stealing (which we referred to as jacking of lockers in our time), smoking, alcoholism and gangsterism. Most times, when you take a well-behaved child to a boarding school, you will get a wayward Child in return.

Sexual Abuse: Lots of Children in boarding school were sexually abused by the house masters, teachers and the senior class students which they will not be able to tell the parents during vacation. Most of this sexual acts take place during social nights, preps and midterm breaks when some students were left behind in the hostel.

Rape: Another evil very close to sexual abuse in boarding school is rape. Cases of rape are more pronounced among the students without reporting to school authority because of shame and stigma.

Sexually Active: Early exposure to sex made many of them to be sexually active among their peers to the point of committing abortions. Unfortunately, this fact is unknown to many parents. To them, their child is still a virgin.

Initiation: To many parents who think they are smart by sending their boys to boys only school and the girls to girls only school in order to avoid sexual abuse. This has not solved your problem because many of them were sexually abused by their teachers and the most common one is they get initiated into the act of lesbianism and homosexualism. This will later affect them mentally and psychologically in future.

Victims Of Bullying: The seniors and the notorious among them often go about bullying the weak and younger ones in the hostel which will make the victims fearful, cause low self-esteem and psychological and mentally trauma.

Hardened Heart: Having been away from the parents for most parts of their lives and exposure to bullying and vices like smoking, alcohol and rape normally hardened their mind and become tough thereby becoming easier for them to engage in many criminal acts like armed robbery or join cultism in higher institution. At this point, they cease to miss their parents while they feel more at home with their peers. That is why they still want to spend their holiday at their friends’ house.

Poor Medical Attention And Poor Feeding: The medical attention given to a sick student in the boarding school is usually poor unprofessional because no test is being carried out before administering drugs. Many of these schools lack medical laboratories and this has caused a lot of complications to these innocent children.

Unhealthy and unbalanced diet is the order of eating in a boarding school that is why Children from boarding house always look skinny during the school session.

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