When people start working with me to explore the impact of having been to boarding school, one of the first recommendations I often make, is to watch The Making of Them.

The Making of Them is a British TV documentary that was first broadcast in September 1993 following several young boys aged 8, starting at a prep school.

The Making of You?

When we were sent to boarding school, many of us were explicitly told ‘this will be the making of you’. In some ways this may be true. There can be benefits in terms of facilities, academic achievement and access to future careers etc.

However, there are also costs. 

One of the main ones being an impact on intimate relationships – both then and now in the present. 

The breaking of the attachment bonds too early, creates what Nick Duffell calls ‘the strategic survival personality’. 

In order to survive the ordeal, the child has to cut off from their vulnerability and abandonment pain and grow up very quickly. They are now being brought up in an institution, away from parents, siblings, wider family, friends and pets. Away from the comfort of a home and a familiar bedroom.

The documentary can be tough viewing for ex-boarders, bringing up memories from the past. It can also be tough viewing for those who understand the importance of parental attachment when growing up, and can see the impact of the forced severing of the attachment bonds with mothers and fathers.

What strikes me most about the young children in the documentary, is that they are so small.

Growing up quickly

These young children have to grow up quickly.

We see the initial shock of the abandonment when the parents leave.  In the video, Nick Duffell highlights the double bind that can arise as the child tries to make sense of what is happening:

“Mummy and daddy say they love me.

I know that they love me because they’ve said it and yet they sent me away.

If they love me, why did they send me away?

But I know it’s important to them and its cost a lot of money, so if I show them I don’t like it they’ll be disappointed.

And if they’re disappointed, they won’t love me.

So, I won’t show them I hate it.

Either that, or the child reasons if I don’t like it, there must be something wrong with me.

Maybe that’s why they sent me away.

Either way the child is caught in this trap and can only get out by shutting down on his feelings and thereby betraying himself.”

An Environment without Love

Later on, Nick Duffell goes on to say:

“…perhaps the most fundamental issue is that no matter how well-meaning the boarding schools are, no matter how committed the staff are, they do not give the children in their care love.

So when you put a child in boarding school, you are talking about putting a child in an environment without love, for maybe three-quarters of the year, at an age in which love is so important to that child.”

As one headmaster in the documentary says, there is an explicit desire to make these children self-reliant. We see the formal shaking of hands as children enter the school, and even as they say goodbye to some of the fathers.

The same headmaster talks of phoning the parents of the new boys on the first night to reassure them that their child is happy. It can feel that the focus here is on the wellbeing of the parents rather than of the child?