Last Day of Term Messages

I have just waved my youngest daughter off to school for her last day of school. Presents in her bag for the teachers and a black marker pen to write on the back of her friends' shirts. On Tuesday night I attended her graduation assembly, and had a moment when I realised this would be the last time I would step through the gates of this school that all three daughters have passed through.

When it came to choosing a school for my eldest, I listened to my gut instinct. I remember welling up at the headmasters talk, as he spoke about how much they valued the individual and I got the sense this was more important than academic achievement. This was in direct contrast to my own personal experience at boarding school, and I knew how important it was for me to not project those same values of success or failure onto my children. 

So, we went against the grain and chose the school without the fancy sports pitches, theatre or outstanding results and put our faith in the ethos and integrity of the school. It was the right decision and I am immensely proud of how the girls have grown throughout their teenage years, have always wanted to go to school and have all done well academically. 

As well as wanting their self-esteem to be built on other things than academic success, being part of a community was a priority for me.  I have witnessed them developing a sense of belonging having grown up in the same city throughout their childhood.  Again, something I cannot relate to.  Having roots in one place gives them a sense of identity, somewhere they can clearly answer that question that baffles many ex-boarders, "Where are you from?" 

As well as my own, I am starting to notice the wrinkles on the faces of the parents I first met at the school gates all those years ago.   Friendships have come and gone as life changes have come about, but we still walk the same routes down to the sea and remember each others children when they were small and care about how they are now as emerging adults.  There is a consistency to spending this amount of time in the same place, witnessing all the changes, feeling nostalgic for past times, and staying put.  In the past, I would move on, collecting friends in different places and then leaving them as I went.  And start again. 

When aware of how our own childhoods may have impacted us, we often try and offer our own children the opposite experience. Trying to compensate for what we didn't have.  I know this was strongly behind my own agenda, and without having children I expect I would still be on the move, searching for that illusive place that I could fit in and call home.  

Although my children have done well academically, socially and have a sense of belonging, they lack the confidence that I see those who go to private schools often having.  That ability to walk into a room of unknown people and be socially confident and impress in an interview.  Skills not learnt in a state school, but acquired often in private and boarding schools.

We could see this as being part of a survival personality - what children need to develop in order to manage growing up in such institutions away from home. A training and a mask that gives them the ability to be outwardly confident, a hypervigilance that enables them to survey a room and quickly strategise who the right person is to talk to, and how to get what they need.  Many ex-boarders I work with have shared their ability to do this. 

What is often hidden is the anxious child part underneath who fears being disliked, and is terrified of both conflict and intimacy. This is the part that often comes out in intimate relationships, if the survival personality part lets it, that is. 

I run a course for ex-boarders and in the latest cohort I added a module in which we look at values; reflecting on how much we were influenced by our family and our schools. Needing to have the right kind of career, one that is worthy of their education, can be a legacy of boarding school.  The feeling of privilege at having gone to such a school can really impose this belief which can have a damaging impact on one's self esteem.

I fell victim to this myself and in my 20s I had no idea how to work out what I wanted to do career wise.  Leaving university with a degree in politics, I continued with my passion for travelling and subsequently fell into my first job working for Travelbag in London, creating and selling holidays to Asia.  Although there was a pre-requisite to have a degree for the job, I still harboured shame that it wasn't good enough.  I was working in Piccadilly Circus, met amazing friends, got free trips abroad and shared my passion with others.  However, when I'd meet people and they asked me what I did - I always felt it wasn't good enough. I know what jobs would have been deemed appropriate for someone with a boarding school background, and always felt shame I wasn't living up to the privileged education I'd been given.  The fact that my work was enjoyable, and enabled me to combine my passion with travel was insignificant. Turbulent years followed, with various different plans until I eventually gave up and chose motherhood. Finally a valid reason for opting out of a career that I "should" be in. 

Many ex-boarders share an experience of very little guidance and support after school.  Suddenly out in the world, often with broken attachments to parents it becomes very hard to consider what they may actually want to do. Maybe they were never asked and just put on someone else's trajectory.  

Many people come to this stage in mid life, some earlier and some as a result of a breakdown. When it is time to take a step back, pause, turn inward and find out what they really want to do.  We can do this by connecting with those parts of ourselves that never got a chance to flourish and use their voice.  What makes you happy?  What do you you enjoy?  What lights you up? Those are all questions we can start to ask ourselves now, whatever age we are. 

As I listened to my daughter's form tutor addressing her class with his words of wisdom and hopes for the future for them all, i remembered the charge that was said to us all we lined up in chapel on the last day of term.  

" I charge you never to forget the great benefits that you have received in this place..."

No wonder it takes so long to unlearn those messages that were enforced upon us, see beyond the privilege and develop our own inner wisdom, voice and guidance.  

For information about my next Boarding School Course due to start in September, please click on the link below.

Boarding School Course for Ex-Boarders Waitlist (theboardingschooltherapist.com)