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My preteen doesn’t like to wear the color blue next to his skin. If he has to wear a navy shirt for a school event, he’ll don a red t-shirt underneath. It seems an odd quirk, but it’s an indication of the complexity of growing up as a faculty child, or “fac brat”, on a boarding school campus.

You see, my school’s main color is red. Sometimes it is described as crimson, sometimes maroon, but it’s basically red. “Go Big Red! We are Big Red! We all Bleed Red”, the students roar at games with our arch rivals, Andover. And yes, Andover’s color is blue. Andover chants: “What do we eat? Red Meat”, and our side responds: “What does it do? Kills you!” For my son, wearing blue as his base layer would be sacrilege.

All in the family

Raising kids in the dorm and on the campus of a boarding school is a wonderful, weird mix. Being a faculty spouse is, I’m told, even more complex, but that’s a story for another time. Boarding students come here for a maximum of four years, and leave with an indelible impression of their formative years that draws many of them back here through the course of their lives.

The faculty kids have an even deeper immersion. Many of them take their first tottering steps down long dorm corridors and learn to ride a bike on the pedestrian paths circling the library. They eat in the dining halls, take swim lessons with the team captains, hang out at the communal rope swing, attend innumerable plays, assemblies and recitals, learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube from a skilled teenager, and have babysitters from Nigeria, South Korea, New Zealand and Las Vegas, California and Connecticut. All within a brick dorm in leafy New Hampshire.

Many of the fac brats develop an early fierce loyalty to this campus and this school. But what about their place here as children? They are part of the fabric of school life, yet they are not students, not staff, not faculty. And they face a difficult choice. Will I enroll when the time comes? This is a tough school with a demanding curriculum, and it isn’t made any easier when you have to undergo a drastic transition upon enrollment.

Those adults who’ve hung out with your parents in your back yard for years are suddenly your prep English and biology teachers! And you have to remember not to call them by their first names any more.

Boundaries and loyalties

It’s relatively easy for me to write about this because my son is still a few years away from making any decision about high school. Will he go through the application process and join the ranks of the Exonians here if he is accepted? Should he apply to other private schools so he can be absolutely confident that his acceptance has nothing to do with connection, even though I can’t countenance sending him away at age fourteen? Should he go to the strong local public high school with the majority of his middle school classmates?  

All of the parents of fac brats muddle through these questions, while also figuring out the boundaries for their younger children’s participation in the life of the school.

It’s fine for little ones to build forts in the common rooms during break, right? Fine for them to come to the dorm cook out and to show off their Halloween costumes before we head out for trick-or-treating. Is it fine for them to show up at a late night event where the students might open up about vulnerabilities and struggles? How about popping out for the Saturday check-in snack, even though the budget doesn’t include extras beyond the student residents?

What the future holds

I think that as long as the parents are consciously figuring it out and constantly refiguring the boundaries, there’s no right or wrong answer. I do know, however, that I was relieved to finish my dorm service before my own children reached the age of the student residents in my dorm, so our family boundaries were pretty clear.

And what will we decide once middle school finishes? Will I run into my own child racing between classes along with his peers? I really don’t yet know, but I do know that my son wears his colors close to his chest, and he does indeed “bleed red”. This will be his home, whether or not it ever becomes his school.

Dr. Eimer Page teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy and also serves as Exeter’s Director of Global Initiatives. She tweets as @eimerpage.