Social aspects - friends an hour away?

[Anonymous]

How do you manage the social aspect of private high school when DS or DD's friends are an hour away? Or do parents generally work together to make it work since many are in the same boat?

[Anonymous]

If tween and up, texting and social media on school days; hang out on weekends.

If younger, see if they can do some onsite after-school activities or after care together.

[Anonymous]

In high school, they are so busy that social time is generally limited to on line (which is how teens gather these days 80% of time), or weekends. They figure out themselves how to make the weekends work. My kids have friends near and far and they make it work. But also they have just spent the whole school week and after school activity time together too, and sometimes they just want to chill at home.

[Anonymous]

It's hard. The neighborhood kids who attend the local public have impromptu get togethers, like a quick trip to Starbucks after school, and a lot more independence in terms of making plans and seeing one another outside school.

[Anonymous]

Socially at school, clubs, and sports.

Sleepovers and weekend meetups.

[Anonymous]

Like many have said, social events on the weekend; sports, clubs and aftercare (for the younger set) during the week. Our kids have grown up participating in our neighborhood summer swim team and have lots of local friends at different schools, and they meet up with them for random hanging out year round. They love having several groups of friends!

[Anonymous]

We just offer to make the drive and offer to have friends sleep over sometimes.

[Anonymous]

This is the primary reason we didn’t look at schools across the river for our DCs.

I spent 45min on a bus every morning going to private school when I was young and it definitely impacted socially not to have the hang out time that kids did who lived close to the school. Decided we didn’t want that for our kids even though there were schools we would otherwise have been interested in.

[Anonymous]

It depends on your school. Our DD is at Visi - it’s about 1/3 each evenly split among the DMV. During the week, they hang out a lot after school because activities and sports and then also hang out in Georgetown. But they also have quite a bit of homework so during the week between activities and homework they are pretty busy. On weekends sometimes they will meet up at a mutual location or at someone’s house. And a lot of the girls drive as upper classmen so are not dependent upon parents.

[Anonymous]

I didn't grow up around here but I went to a private day school elsewhere that drew kids from a 45-60 minute radius around the school, so it might be possible to be friends with some one who lived 90 minutes away. In middle school it was tricky for parents, I guess, but I suspect we had more sleepovers than the average kid and we did a lot of group activities. Not as many one-to-one hangouts, but a bunch of kids (carpool opportunities) getting together, just because I think it worked better for everyone.

In highschool, it was an awesome excuse to drive around.

But, a good private school keeps the kids occupied on campus most of the time... I was at school from 745-530 on a normal night, as late as 8 on Wednesdays (sports days) and typically had either voluntary tutoring or required study hall (for suffering grades) Saturday morning, and sports Saturday afternoon. That's part of the point of private school, the close community centered around campus.

Of course, you can also hit the jackpot (as I did) and have your closest friend live only a mile or so away.

[Anonymous]

Most of my kid's closest friends from school actually live walking distance, and the ones who don't are just a 20 minute car ride, so that's not an issue. They often pick a place in the middle to meet up on the weekend.

[Anonymous]

But, a good private school keeps the kids occupied on campus most of the time... I was at school from 745-530 on a normal night, as late as 8 on Wednesdays (sports days) and typically had either voluntary tutoring or required study hall (for suffering grades) Saturday morning, and sports Saturday afternoon. That's part of the point of private school, the close community centered around campus.

This is the key. We have had one child at Visitation, Gonzaga and St John’s. Visi really did a great job of having after school activities etc that kept our kid really in the loop and involved. We were about 30 minutes away but she was busy well until we’d pick her up in the evenings.

[Anonymous]

For a very close friend, spend most of the weekend at each other's house one to two times a month.

[Anonymous]

I had a 45-60+ minute commute in HS and my two best friends and I had regular sleepovers at each other’s homes 1-2 times a month, plus lots of 3-way party line phone calls (my parents put in a second phone line when I was in HS for me) while watching TV “together” on Friday nights.

Very fortunate that our kid’s school is less than 20 minutes away and most friends are about that same range, or meet up in destinations within that range, so it’s been very easy to manage DC’s more spontaneous get-togethers with friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you manage the social aspect of private high school when DS or DD's friends are an hour away? Or do parents generally work together to make it work since many are in the same boat?

Encourage them to make plans ahead of time for the weekend. In highschool many events happen in the city the school is in or nearby it. Hopefully they can sleep at a friend's for those events and then reciprocate by doing or offering something else. Social events happen so be flexible to drive them or help them get to events. I know a family their kid can never attend anything because they live too far away and I think the parents should have taken that into account before making the decision to send them to the school.