By Marguerite Kelly
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, August 4, 2006

Q. Our beautiful, independent 13-year-old wants to go to boarding school in the United States because she's desperate to get a fresh start.

We adopted her at birth in Latin America, where we still live, but have never made a big deal about it. We simply love her because she is our daughter.

Sometimes she has a tough time accepting our love, however, perhaps because she resents her 9-year-old sister -- who is fair-skinned and who wasn't adopted -- or perhaps she grieves for her birth mom or feels rejected by her.

She also has attention deficit disorder and mild learning disabilities, but she loved elementary school and made tremendous strides until we were transferred to another country last year. Although she was quite popular at first, her new school had many cliques and she started telling stories and gossiping about others in an effort to be accepted. But soon her new friends called her a liar and stopped talking to her, even at the lunch table.

She then asked me if she could stay with relatives in the States; I said she could live there only if she went to boarding school.

She said okay and promised to come home in a year, so I looked for -- and found -- a school for ADD kids, just an hour from my mom's house and headed by someone who was adopted herself and who also has ADD.

This small coed school is quite strict -- they don't let students watch TV or send e-mails or IMs, ever -- and it has no more than six kids in any class.

The kids go to school; exercise for two hours a day; do their own laundry; clean house; help make, serve and clean up from breakfast and dinner; and on top of that, they must earn the right to see a weekly movie, wear makeup or go off campus. My daughter just says, "I'll get used to it."

I agreed to boarding school reluctantly, but my husband is devastated by the plan. He strongly believes that a 13-year-old belongs with her family; he's disturbed that she can leave us so easily and he feels backed into a corner.

Is it ever appropriate to send a young child to boarding school? Should a 13-year-old be allowed to spread her wings?

A.Boarding school would be a bad idea if you were pushing your daughter out of the house or if the school were badly run or the lessons poorly taught, but she should have a great experience if it's a good school, because it would answer her needs.

Right now she wants to break away, not from you but from her former friends and the reputation she has made for herself. And her instinct is right.

Girls from fifth to ninth grade -- and especially those in seventh grade -- often band together in mean little cliques, forcing a newcomer to do mean things herself, just to be accepted. This behavior inevitably makes the child ashamed of herself and destroys her self-confidence in just a few months.

Even if your daughter had never faced a clique, boarding school should be good for her, since each new experience inspires a child to think; and if the experience is good, it will encourage her to reach heights higher than she ever thought she could.

A school for ADD students -- if well run -- should also teach your daughter how to manage her time, organize her materials and perfect her study habits -- skills that other children seem to learn by osmosis. In addition, the emphasis on order and neatness will teach her how to get rid of the distractions in her life, which is a lesson all ADD children should learn. Their minds distract them quite enough as it is.

Your mom is the final plus in this plan, since she lives near enough to send special treats to your daughter sometimes and to invite her out for lunch.

If this school doesn't work out, however, tell your daughter that she can always come home midterm. This should ease her anxiety -- and yours -- significantly.

Whether she goes or stays, she should keep seeing a therapist, particularly one familiar with adoption issues. Some adopted children get angry at their birth mothers for letting them be adopted, while others think they must have been too ugly, or too unlovable, for them to keep. Neither position is sensible, of course. A birth mother who lets someone else rear her child is showing the finest kind of love, and so are the parents who give her their name and their hearts.

An adopted child is the ultimate gift.

Questions? Send them toadvice@margueritekelly.comor to Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 0003.