As the new year starts, students are returning to school after the indulgent holiday season. Most children will be dropped off, or take a bus, or ride a bicycle with their friends. They will sit through a tedious syllabus day, doodle on desks, wait for the final class to end, then rush home to the freedom of homework.
But, there is another percentage of children that were put on airplanes a few days before the start of term. They were collected by staff members, unpacked their dorm rooms, reconnected with their friends after a month apart and started the new term together. As the term goes on, they will wake up, walk to classes, sit through tedious lectures, worry they won’t get along with their new roommate, obsess over their crush from last term, listen to evacuation stories from their classmate, and wait to email their parents.
Students in boarding school have a very different experience when it comes to school. As a former boarding student, I have found explaining boarding school days a challenging task. It’s almost easier to tell people about driving through de-mined fields, or changing into an abaya on an airplane to meet my parents, than it is to explain how extensive the impact of boarding school can be.
Many students love boarding school. It can be an adventurous and exciting time. Living in a dorm with your friends and sharing all the monumental moments of life with them is a wonderful experience! A decade has passed since I was a student in my boarding school, and I still have incredibly strong friendships from that season in life. Those friendships were forged during really difficult years and unique challenges - and in part their longevity has come from growing up together. I also have really fond memories of staff members, sports teams, drama performances, and some really excellent classes.
That being said, there was still a lot of loss as a result of going to boarding school. A loss that is mainly and widely recognised in boarding students is the loss of home. But as this article from 2016 states, ‘homesick is not the correct term’
'The term ‘homesickness’ does not do justice to the depth of losses to which the boarding school child is subjected. The broken attachments of the first days in boarding school amount to a significant, but unrecognised form of bereavement and the child must learn to live without love.'
The loss of home does not encapsulate all the losses involved in boarding school - the boarder loses a relationship with their caregivers, the boarder loses familiar routines, being involved in family events, their previous hobbies, their perceived freedom, and most significantly, they lose time.
The article above goes on to describe the impact that boarding school can have on an individual long term
'The armoured personality and encapsulated emotional self becomes a way of being and influences the way ex-boarders may interact as adults. As a child, the ex-boarder splits off parts of his vulnerable self in order to survive, and the adult may show signs of amnesia and an inability to get in touch with their feelings. Ex-boarders may show symptoms of dissociation and it may manifest as a sense of feeling permanently distant from the world which is a recognised symptom of PTSD.'
This is not the only article that denotes the effects of boarding school on students. TCK Training shows from their White Pages, Caution and Hope, that '1 out of every 5 students who attended boarding schools had ACE scores of four or higher, putting them at high risk of negative outcomes in adulthood.’ You can find their complete research paper here. It's well worth the read!
So, what do we do with this information? As a former boarder, this isn’t easy research to digest, but it also validates a lot of the tumultuous emotions I felt during boarding school and for years afterward.
This research might be overwhelming to read as a parent. Boarding school is often the only, or the best, option for global families. In my situation, boarding school really was the best option for my education, and I am grateful for an unparalleled academic experience, but that reality doesn’t erase the loss or the depth of grief from that loss.
I empathise with parents who have sent their children to boarding school and are now learning about the challenges their children faced. A lot of families are expected to utilise boarding school, and the research I have referenced is fairly recent, so this topic takes a lot of grace and understanding and compassion to discuss well.
Recently, I heard a speaker on Expat Resilience. She shared that the losses in the expat life need to be addressed honesty and hopefully. This is what I want to do with the topic of boarding school. You can read the research, you can feel the hurt as a parent dropping your child off, and you can feel the confusion as a child on an airplane alone. But what can be done when boarding school is over, or when it was decades ago and you are still rebuilding that family relationship? How can you engage with the realities of boarding school, good and bad, with honesty and hope?
Here are a few ideas for families who want to reconnect and rebuild after boarding school. These are for families who are in a place to recognise the good, the wonderful, the bad, and the horrible. It takes time to be in that place, and it's okay if you and your family are not there yet.
Recognise time lost for what it is.
Time lost is exactly that - lost time. It cannot be retrieved, but it can be grieved. Many people understand the concept of lost time when it refers to boarding school but they don’t understand the gravity of it. A boarding school term isn’t just three months of a child attending classes and their parents working. It is three months of mornings, breakfasts, classes, exams, projects, lunches, band practice, sports teams, dinners, homework, disappointment, friends and bullies, crushes and broken hearts, drama performances, airport catastrophes, sudden illnesses. It is three months of life, spent separated, over and over again.
Often the breaks from boarding school are not stable either. There is not enough time to settle into a routine as parents and child before the child is on a flight back to their school. The time lost is significant. It needs to be recognised, not brushed away. It needs to be said out loud that both parent and child lost something, both need to grieve, and both need to accept that the time lost cannot be retrieved. It is gone but it can, and should, be grieved.
Lost time cannot be recreated, but new time can be capitalised.
As a boarding student, I was quite harsh with my parents. For a variety of reasons, I struggled to go back and forth from one norm to another. It took me a long time to adjust to being at home and it took a long time for me to create a normal routine of contacting my parents in university. Contact was spotty when I was at boarding school and I had taught myself to cope without calling them right away. I sent long, emotional emails, or short dramatic ones if I was heart sick, but I didn’t capitalise on the availability of contact after boarding school.
Now, while I was in university my parents were still overseas so it wasn’t possible to spend weekends with them, but it was possible to call them more often. Looking back, and now looking forward, I needed someone to tell me that I was allowed to call my parents more, that calling them could rebuild some of the connection lost to time in high school. I’m grateful I have a good relationship with my parents, and we communicate regularly, but it could have been a closer relationship sooner if I had been more informed.
Boarding school staff need to recognise that students often really want to connect with their parents and are not always able to do so. At a day school, teachers can call parents in the middle of the day and a child can be collected from school when they're ill or struggling. This option does not exist for boarders, and boarders know that. The absence of that is significant and requires a lot of intention from teachers and staff members. It is no small calling to be serving at a boarding school.
Recognise that boarding school is not a normal experience.
There is a tension as a boarding school student that is beyond the tension of ‘normal high school.’ The expectation to be grown up and handle many different situations all at once is intense, and it can be a huge burden on many students. It can also be difficult to explain boarding school to parents who have never boarded. Imagine all the dramatic emotions of being a child or teenager, insecure and self conscious, and then condense them into a pressurised environment where everyone is surrounded by everyone all the time.
There is no place to ‘let go’ at boarding school.
If you board, you see all your classmates at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You see the staff member who called your outfit ridiculous at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You see your crush at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You see the friend you hurt at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You have dorm rules, campus rules, and various classroom rules.
If you attend a mission boarding school, you possibly have the additional pressures of being in a hyper religious environment. The religiosity added to school rules is another situation to unpack, I'm not an expert that and have some more unpacking of my own to do but I will just add that the Lord's love and grace is not contingent on school rules, it's contingent on personal acceptance of Christ and His sacrifice.
As a boarder, you also know your friends’ parents are in very different countries and situations. Everyone is aware of the instability in the world beyond the campus gate. You are aware of the missionaries evacuating a dangerous country, or the ones handling an epidemic in their region or the diplomats managing a challenging political situation. You absorb all of this without the consistency of your family. There is no trusted adult telling you they love and cherish you each morning and evening, there is little consistency in care and personal stability (to be clear, that is not the role of staff members, it's unreasonable to expect staff members to be surrogate parents, and while I had a few exceptional dorm mothers I know it was unreasonable to expect them to share my parents' love and care for me).
That is a different reality from going to school in the morning and returning home in the evening, debriefing with your parents, and sleeping in your own room.
One of the most helpful things a parent can do for their child is to recognise that boarding school is not a normal experience, and that is not always fun or easy or an adventure. Sometimes it is lonely, difficult and really, really sad. Acknowledging that, as an emotionally healthy parent, can be really helpful.
Recognise and accept that most family members want the best for other family members.
I think most parents will read the statement above and think it’s for the children. And it is. But it’s also for parents. Many children know their parents want the best for them, or they should. Boarding students understand that their parents chose boarding school because it was the best option academically or otherwise.
Parents need to know that children also often want the best for their parents, but that looks different as a child. In my case, I knew my parents were stressed and busy on a challenging mission field, so my version of ‘giving them the best’ was to be dishonest about how much I was hurting so I didn’t stress them out even more. I also tried to pursue avenues in high school I thought would make them proud, whether I enjoyed them or not (I really had no place in AP Calc and I would like those brain cells back). In the end this caused more issues and even more stress but as a teenager I really believed I was doing what was ‘best for my parents.’ And I know, from speaking to other students, this is not an uncommon thought.
Children really do want the best for their parents, they just don’t always know what the best is because, again, they are children.
Decide what an ideal family life would look like after boarding school, and work toward that.
While keeping that point in mind, that families want the best for each other, decide what the 'best' family life looks like after boarding school. Many families send their children to boarding school out of necessity. Then, when it is no longer necessary or the children are in university, there is a shift in family dynamics. A new family structure needs to be discovered.
The pre-boarding school family no longer exists in time or space. Maybe that needs to be grieved. Maybe the alternate timeline of ‘if we never sent them then xyz’ needs to be grieved. After that, the new family reality can be accepted and adjusted. Communication in a family takes a lot of work and a lot of time. It takes understanding and grace. It isn’t easy to let go of expectations, but sometimes, that is needed in order to settle into a healthy family dynamic where each member feels loved, cared for, heard, and known by those closest to them.
Sometimes, part of this process is recognising that your family members may not be the closest people in your life. Friends are surrogate family to a lot of boarders, this is painful for parents and children but it is also a good thing. Friends are essential, and a child being able to make lasting friendships in the absence of family is an impressive sign of emotional resilience.
Have an honest discussion with your family about post-boarding school life.
What do holidays look like? Where are they spent? Are friends, who are essentially family, invited to family events?
What does family communication look like? How much or how often does each member want to communicate and through what means?
What topics or stories or emotions need to be discussed and debriefed as a family before a healthy future can be realised? (If you and your family need a debrief, they are available through TCK Training)
Debriefing can help your family unpack the most painful aspects of global life and move forward in an emotionally healthy way.
Communicate clear expectations with your child, whether they are five, fifteen or fifty. Tell your child how much you value their communication and why you are making certain choices as a parent. Good communication really can work wonders - any pastor, parent, wife, husband, friend, co-worker, barista, or doctor will tell you that.
This was a long read. If you made it all the way through - thank you. I hope it was encouraging for boarding school students and their families - past and present. I hope that if boarding school is in your family’s story that you are now able to interact and engage with that chapter with more honesty, more grace, and more hope. If you would like more support or more resources, please do not hesitate to reach out.
I shared a few experiences I had as a boarder in high school. I want to not that there were staff members who made my years as a boarder much more manageable than they would have been otherwise, and I am thankful for them.
If you work at a boarding school, please know that your influence (positive or negative) has a lasting effect on students. Please be informed about boarding students’ realities and be gracious in your interactions with them.
Sources
Brighton Therapy Partnership. “The Long-Term Impact of Boarding School - Brighton Therapy Partnership.” Brighton Therapy Partnership - Training & CPD for Therapists Demo Site, 23 Nov. 2023, brightontherapypartnership.org.uk/impact-of-boarding-school/.
Tanya Crossman. “Caution and Hope for Boarding School Students.” Tanya Crossman, 2023, www.tcktraining.com/blog/20221018caution-and-hope-for-boarding-school-students.