This post was written in February of 2022 after I had sent my younger son to Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia. I am posting it now with a few edits, because I have been asked many questions about my decision to send both of my sons to military boarding school. When I made the decision to do this, there were not many resources out there for parents wrestling with this decision, and I wished that there would have been someone I could have spoken to who would have shared the good, the bad and the ugly with me.
I will note that this is only MY experience. My sons have their own perspectives, as do other parents and kids who have attended this and the other boarding schools that do exist. This is just my experience and my perspective from inside my own little head.
If you’re considering military boarding school for your son, you may be asking many of the same questions I did. Why military school? Will it actually help? What kind of child thrives there? And perhaps the hardest question of all: how do you know whether sending your child away is the right thing to do? I can’t answer those questions for every family, but I can tell you why we ultimately chose Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia, and what I learned from that decision.
At some point, while reading the last few paragraphs, you made the face that I routinely see when I proudly discuss my son’s accomplishments, his adventures, and his trials and challenges with others. It’s a face I’ve quickly learned to recognize and move past. It’s half of a face of judgment (I would never send my kid off for somebody else to raise!!), and half a face of curiosity (Why? Was he that bad?).
So, Why Would You Send Your Sons To Military Boarding School?
I will answer your questions now so that we can quickly move on to bigger and better things.
Aren’t You Sending Them Off for Someone Else to Raise Them?
I’m still raising my sons. The most common misconception I encounter is, “Why send your child off for someone else to raise him?” I would argue that sending my boys away to a military school can often feel like parenting on steroids. It was an experience that illustrated to me how much I really needed to grow as a parent. More about that later.
Were They Really That Bad?
- My sons were not that bad. Brave people would ask me, when they heard that my sons went away to Military Boarding School, “Were they really that bad?” Absolutely not. I have two sons. They were both that good. Each boy made the choice to attend Riverside Military Academy for different reasons. And they had wildly different experiences and results. Stay tuned on that as well!
Now that your biggest questions have been put to rest, I will try to explain how and why we made the difficult decision, and how I feel about it in retrospect.
Why Military School Was Already Part of My Family’s Story
I may have never considered a military school or boarding school for either of my sons, but my father attended military boarding school in grades 8-12. When my father passed away a few years ago, I sent an obituary out to his former alma mater in hopes that they would publish it or send it out to his old classmates. In the years prior to his death, my father had been interested in finding his old “Brothers in Blue.” He celebrated when he and my mother found one of his old friends on Facebook. They even met some of his old high school military school buddies for dinner on multiple occasions.
I was close to my dad. I worked for him in our family business, a business he and my mother built together. But we were also close beyond our shared career path. Out of my parents, my personality matched his more closely than my mother’s. I was a challenging adolescent. Much like my father was, and much like my youngest son is. I had energy, I questioned everything, and I also had an emotional IQ that allowed me to get past some of my busy teachers and other authority figures. My parents chose to send me to private school, where my teachers had more time and gave me more attention, and I was able to do well.
Why My Grandparents Chose Military School for My Father
My father’s parents sent him to military school when he went through the same challenging phase. They are both gone now, as is my father, so I can’t ask them the same burning questions. What was he doing? Was there a final straw that made them decide on military school? And what went into making that decision? How did they find the school? Did they consider other schools before choosing one? And perhaps most practically, how did they afford it?
But I can assume that they went through much of the same thought process I went through.
What Military School Was Like for My Father
Anyway, my father shared a few things about his experience there. He started in the eighth grade and continued through high school. He graduated from Riverside Military Academy in 1965. While attending, he shined other cadets’ shoes for spending money. He played football and baseball. He and perhaps a few other cadets snuck out on weekends to visit a girls’ school in the same town. They may or may not have gotten caught, gotten demerits, and had to scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush.
What Riverside Military School Gave My Father
When he recollected his experiences as an adult, he always smiled. Yes, it was tough. He missed his family, most notably his mother and her cooking. But his time with his brothers in blue and the lessons he learned while there were treasured throughout his lifetime.
As fun as it may have been, near graduation in 1965, he was reportedly offered a spot on the University of Georgia baseball team, but he chose to go home to Homestead, Florida. After five years away at school, he was homesick. Let that sink in, because almost everyone in Georgia would love to be a Bulldog.
During the Vietnam years, my father served in the Army National Guard. And after he was done, he began working. He credited his tenure at Riverside Military Academy with his work ethic and grit. My father worked seven days a week for more than seven years without a vacation.
Fast forward more than fifty years, Dad had built a successful business, sent two kids to private schools, employed hundreds of people, and enjoyed a satisfying marriage and family life. He still credited his time at military school with building the foundations of character that allowed him to persevere through the many challenges that came his way so that he was able to enjoy the best of life’s blessings.
When he passed away and we went through his things, we found his high school ring, his yearbooks, his senior picture, and realized that this time in his life had been pivotal to who he was as a man.
The First Time I Considered Military School for My Own Sons
It was at that time that I became curious about my Father’s military history. I had married Mike, who also credited his thirty years in the military for building him into the man he is. So, I googled Riverside and attended a mixer event with other curious parents. I think at the time, I just wanted to get closer to him and know that side of my father. I think I felt like being in touch with those memories might bring him back to me in some small way.
What I Noticed About Boys Who Attended Military School
It only took one exposure to students who attended the school to realize the difference between a regular boy and a boy who attends Riverside. It wasn’t just the fact that they said yes sir and yes ma’am when spoken to by adults. The biggest difference I saw in the young men who attended that mixer in uniform was that they stood up straight and tall. Their upper backs and shoulders didn’t have that defeated slump in them that many boys’ shoulders do. That slump that shows the number of hours they’ve spent hovering over a computer or a phone, measuring themselves against others and coming up short. These boys in uniform had bright eyes, filled with the hope and promise of a great future. They were respectful, yes. But it was the spark that they had – it got my attention.
My dad had that spark. And I felt like the world, or maybe post-pandemic school, or adolescence, was stealing it from my boys.
At that time, I was hoping to send my middle child to the school. He was a very structured young man; he got great grades. He kept his room tidy and seemed to thrive in the structured, disciplined household that we kept. I thought he would be able to put a military school education to great use. But I hadn’t considered it for my younger son, because at that time, he wasn’t even old enough.
Why I Wanted a Different Educational Environment for My Sons
I also felt like because I was a single mom for many years before I married Mike, I had shortchanged my children in many ways. And I have always been a believer that education is the key to socio-economic advancement. If I could offer my sons the absolute best education, it would provide them with the best opportunity to climb beyond the social and cultural station in life that I brought them into. I wanted the best for my sons, as any parent does, and spent many nights thinking, praying, and journaling about how I could do my part to give them the best possible foundation.
Why We Chose Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, GA
A few years went by after that first mixer, and both boys grew. I wanted to send both boys, but for multiple reasons, I had to choose one. At the time, Mike and I chose to send our youngest to Riverside Military Academy.
My Youngest Son Was Struggling in Public School After COVID
By the time he was old enough to attend Riverside, my youngest son was struggling academically. COVID put computers in front of every student in public school, and overworked teachers began allowing YouTube to become the primary source of education. My youngest child was smart enough to figure out a way past every security feature the school could devise, and bright enough to talk his way out of every missed assignment. He was charming enough to avoid any disciplinary issues while at school, but his time at home was more challenging. He brought home poor grades, and lost privilege after privilege, but he didn’t seem to care.
I felt like I was losing my son, one school day at a time, to the internet. His shoulders started to slump. He wanted to do well in school, but the constant distraction of the school computer and the absolutely open-ended opportunity to do whatever he wanted while at school as long as he wasn’t fighting or vaping in class was too much temptation for him. He blended in well enough to get away with whatever he wanted to.
Visiting Riverside Military Academy for the First Time
Finally, I took my youngest son to an open house at the sprawling campus in Gainesville, Georgia. It was hard not to be impressed with the facilities. From the beautiful buildings to the well-credentialed instructors, it felt like the Ferrari of schools. If a parent wanted to feel like they were giving their children the best that education has to offer, this school was it.
How We Made Military Boarding School Tuition Work
When we returned home, discussions turned toward how we would afford the tuition. Even back then, it was steep. I was only working part-time then while focusing on writing and raising the boys. We had recently moved to Georgia from Florida. I looked around and realized I would have to go back to work full-time to make the hefty tuition payment. I took a job in early September and signed the contracts for him to start school in January. There are scholarships at the school, and at the time, I was told that more than 60% of the students attending the school receive some form of scholarship. Even with a scholarship, it is a very large sum, and a family must be committed to the idea, or making those payments will always feel like a hardship. We made many sacrifices, which I will detail in a separate post, but in the end, I can say that it was worth it.
The Reality of Sending Your Child Away to Boarding School
The idea of sending your child to any boarding school is drastically different from the reality of actually packing up your child and dropping them off at school – and then driving away and leaving them there. And military school is completely different from anything else. Stay tuned for part 2 as I elaborate on how the first drop-off went during COVID, the details on the ROC cycle, and ROC Cresting.
What I’ll Cover in Part 2 of Our Military School Story
Future posts will also cover my choice to send my older son to the same school, figuring out how to cover the costs of not one, but two military school tuitions, navigating homesickness, and all the why and how of four long years in military boarding school. I also plan to cover the positives and negatives of choosing this, as well as the opportunity costs to the family (there were some surprises along the way).
Please comment with your questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them!