Sending your child away to a boarding school is a big decision and a major adjustment for your entire family. Once you have made that decision, however, there's another important one to consider: how far away will you send your son or daughter? There are benefits to choosing a local school, but there are also positives to selecting something out of state or even across the country.

A Local Choice Means More Contact

The closer your child is to your home, the more likely you are to see him or her more often. When students attend a military academy or other school with a tight schedule, that visiting time will be automatically restricted by the school's own schedule. However, there will still be ample time to see your child on weekends. If he or she is attending an institution a plane flight away, you're not likely to see them apart from major holidays. However, if they're boarding just down the road, it may be perfectly feasible to pick them up and bring them home just for the weekend.

Frequent contact with your child can be a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, it maintains an important family bond that you may not be ready to sever. On the other hand, many people send their child away to a military academy because they want to create behavioral change or help foster greater maturity. If this is part of your goal, frequent visits from home may be counterproductive. Sending your child away to a military prep school is a good way to help your son mature in part because it sends him into an environment where he must be more self-sufficient than he is asked to be at home. If you bring him home every weekend, it will be more difficult to learn those important lessons.

A Distant Military Prep School May Be More Stressful

Sending your child outside easy driving distance also has drawbacks. Being away from you for a long time with no option to return home can be a very stressful situation. In addition, if your son is adjusting to a JROTC military school for the first time after being accustomed to regular educational institutions, that adjustment plus adjustment to living away from home for the first time can be too much to bear. Moving away is a big decision, one normally reserved for more mature students who have already graduated high school and are moving on to college. Asking a much younger child to make that transition may be asking too much.

Talk With An Advisor

As a parent, you don't have to consider these tough questions on your own. Especially if you choose a military academy, there should be advisors who are able to help you. Transitioning to any kind of boarding environment is difficult, but sending your child to military prep school creates even more questions. The staff at a good JROTC military school should be able to answer any questions you have, and help you decide what kind of environment would be best for your child.