This collection, from Routledge Publishers, will be available in March 2025. Edited by Nicky Moxey and Linda Devereux, it adds to the growing body of work on the often-traumatic consequences of attending boarding school. The book explores the experiences of two groups that have as yet received too little attention: women and third culture kids.
Expatriate families often feel pressured to send their children back to Britain to attend school, but they usually do so without understanding the long-term implications of that choice. The aim of this book is to spell those consequences out. The personal testimonies of individuals whose childhoods were spent at such institutions are a major source of insight in this task.
Suzanne’s chapter is entitled Stepping from denial into curiosity: Boarding school through an attachment-trauma lends. She explores the science that helps to explain why boarding school might have lasting traumatic consequences for children, including the study of attachment and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). She also explores why it is so uncomfortable for parents, and society more widely, to face up to the insights of this research. She ends by reflecting on what can be done to help people step out of denial and into curiosity.
