With the rapid development of rural boarding schools, the quality of education in rural primary and secondary schools has been greatly improved in China. However, due to the lack of parental care and communication with their parents, a series of problems emerge in the education of students in rural boarding school, such as weak academic performance and poor school adaptability. Researches in developmental psychology acknowledge the significance of family influence for middle school students who are in their initial stage of puberty, in need of social support from families for their school adaptation, or for dealing with problems in the school environment. Father's involvement refers to the physical and mental participation of father in daily care, support, planning, encouragement, discipline and restraint in the process of children's growth. However, few studies have focused on the relationship between father and children who live at boarding schools. More literature on children family care focuses on mother-child relationship instead of relationship between parents and children. It’s found that father's involvement in parenting can improve students' school adjustment. Another area is also in need of attention, i.e. potential mediating mechanism (how the father's involvement in parenting affects school adjustment) and the regulatory mechanism (when does father's involvement affect school adjustment) between father's participation and school adjustment of rural boarding students. Therefore, this study examines the mediating role of rural boarding students' self-control between father's participation in parenting and school adjustment, and tests whether relative deprivation can regulate this indirect effect. By convenience sampling, 548 students from two rural boarding schools in Zhejiang Province and Jiangxi Province were selected, including 289 boys and 259 girls, aged 14-16 (M = 15.31, SD = 0.78), who Completed a series of self-report surveys, including father involvement, self-control, relative deprivation and school adjustment scales. The measurement tools in this study have sound reliability and validity. Data analysis uses SPSS 25.0 and SPSS macro process, which are developed specifically to assess complex models including mediators and mediators. Taken gender and grade as covariates, the results show that: (1) father involvement was positively correlated with self-control and school adjustment, and negatively correlated with relative deprivation;(2) father involvement directly and positively predicted the school adaptation of rural boarding students. Rural boarding students’ school adaptation problems can also be predicted through the mediation of self-control; (3) relative deprivation played a moderating role in self-control. The simple slope test showed that when the relative deprivation was low, the predictive effect of relative deprivation on self-control was significant; when the relative deprivation was high, the predictive effect of father's participation in parenting on self-control was not significant. Generally speaking, the mediating process of father's participation in parenting through self-control on school adjustment is regulated by relative deprivation. Compared with the rural boarding students with higher relative deprivation and the rural boarding students with low relative deprivation, the mediating effect of father's participation in parenting on school adjustment was stronger.The results reveal the influence of father involvement on rural boarding students' school adjustment and its mechanism, which can provide effective enlightenment for improving school adjustment level.