Boarding school syndrome - and the elderly

[FlyingGreenFrog]

My mum and her sisters were all sent to boarding school when they were young. They went from age 8-18 because their Dad had a job abroad so their places were paid by the UK government. It was a cruel school and by all accounts they were desperately unhappy.

My mum and her sisters are now all in their 70s and seem to be becoming increasingly distressed about boarding school again. My mum was crying to me yesterday about her she begged her mum not to be sent back. One of my aunts has dementia and is beginning to struggle to live independently, but she is also increasing fixated on the awful time they had at school.

I just wondered if anyone else had any experience of this, or if it is a known phenomenon. I want to help my mum and my aunts but don’t know if there’s anything I can do.

Ive always heard about how awful it was, that’s never been a secret. But they increasingly have a new childlike distress about it. It’s very sad.

My grandad was in a horrible care home towards the end of his life when he was suffering from dementia, he hadn’t gone to boarding school but he was convinced he’d been put in a workhouse like his grandad had been. Horribly sad but I think you are onto something with the fear of care homes.

I think there was definitely were some awful schools.

My dad also went to boarding school from 8-18 and really enjoyed it, he would have been in his late 70's now, but he's been dead for many years.

OP I think you can just acknowledge your mum's feelings and say that she has every right to feel sad about it, but that your grandmother did what was normal for the time.

So so heartbreaking
. I just can't imagine any reason good enough for someone to send their child in todays world at such a young age to boarding school.

When my nana had dementia she was actually quite content but there were those in her home that you could see were deeply distressed. The nurses said you could always see the ones who had traumatic childhoods. It is a known phenomenon to relive traumatic childhoods in dementia. I'm not sure if the same effect is seen in general aging

Not my experience but my bil said he had a terrible childhood at boarding 11-18. But he has sent his son abroad to board. He was never around dh growing up and we interact with once every five years if that. There is no sibling bond or love. I can't understand why he would do it to his own son after what he said. When I asked him again he said he loved boarding. His children are also growing up apart. It's like repeating history but at the same time convinced two kids growing up in different countries will be close

This is so sad. I'm always being told off on the boarding school threads when I question decisions to board, but it seems a barbaric decision for most children to anyone with any inkling of how attachment is formed.

PP's suggestion of counselling with someone experienced in this area may help.

(I am from a family of boarders).

I am close to my aunt in her 70s. She has suddenly started exhibiting high anxiety and has begun talking about her boarding school experiences. This is new for her, at least in what she has shown to others.

She was sent as a pre teen due to “bad behaviour” but her siblings remained at home. That was all I knew until recently but she has begun talking about the actual school experience and it’s very sad. It was handled so badly by her mother and step father. She lost her dad young and was traumatised and grieving, not badly behaved. She was treated unkindly at school.

I give her space to talk. I don’t probe but allow her to share when she is ready. I broached counselling but she shut down so I just try to be there for her. I think she feels a bit more vulnerable now she’s older. She was fit, active and healthy but now she has health issues and I think that vulnerability and need to accept help from others has triggered off this trauma from boarding school. Hope that makes sense!

Not quite the same but there was a point before my aunt died in her 70s when she kept talking about things that had upset her or that she had found unfair as a teen (nothing traumatic). Memory works in an odd way.

I haven't seen this with boarding school but I have with memories of the war - in older people both with and without dementia.

People who have absolutely never spoken about their wartime experiences suddenly talking about them and being very distressed by them. The experiences were usually unbelievably dreadful and they had managed them by locking them away and never mentioning them. Sometimes there are positive coping mechanisms such as starting to go to reunions, but often these were people too unwell to do this and were preoccupied with very distressing memories.

Not the same but Grandad had dementia in old age and could remember his army number and WW2 experiences but but not what he had for breakfast. Some of the things he spoke about were horrendous. I think he buried a lot of it deep down but it all bubbled to the top again. He died in the late 1990s.

Boarding school just isn't a consideration in our family. You go to a local school and that's that. I think you shouldn't send your kids away, it stores up a whole lot of trouble further down the line

Yes my Dad was sent to boarding school at age 5 and it has contributed to issues later in life. I think it's unbelievably cruel.

That’s exactly what I was coming to say. It’s a fear of institutionalisation, even if they can’t articulate it explicitly.

My grannie when in her 90s and losing her memory, occasionally relived the experience of losing her son, who had died nearly 70 years earlier. It was like she had only just heard the terrible news. I don't know about any official techniques for helping with this sort of trauma resurfacing (I wish I had), but one thing that would often work was distraction, to move her on to another, happier and more recent memory. I suppose like you'd distract a child. That's not to try and dismiss her trauma, but we felt she'd suffered enough already.

My Mum went into a Barnardo’s Home, only for a year, aged 9/10, due to difficult family circumstances, but I can safely say it ruined her life and hugely impacted mine. She was told on the train there that she was going to a boarding school, as there was a lot of shame around Barnardo’s homes, I think. I have no doubt that traumatic things which happen to children have a huge impact on their lives which they often try to mask valiantly, but which become magnified as the other distractions of life - career, family, social engagements - become fewer.

God, this thread has me welling up a bit

Oh your poor mum… I can really relate to this. I’m 41 and also boarded from 8-18 with parents aboard. The schools themselves weren’t awful, though I was bullied at the first one, and my closest friends are still my secondary school friends. But the fact of being away from home, of losing that day to day connection with family, of wishing large chunks of my childhood away until I could see them again, was deeply traumatic regardless of how pleasant or otherwise the surroundings were. It’s resurfaced lately for me as my children are now the same age as I was when I went to school and the idea of packing them off to live with strangers makes me feel physically sick. It’s made me feel a whole new distance from my parents as I find their decisions so painful and hard to understand, and I can well imagine it having an impact in different way in another 30 years.
I’ve fortunately managed to counter the Sunday night effect though - I’m so unbelievably grateful every Sunday evening that I’m not being sent away and get to stay at home with DH and the children.

My Dad was sent away at 13 to board. Only child. He's 90 now and spent a month in a care home last year, he absolutely hated every second of it and when he came out said that it had made him think he was back at boarding school, so sad. We'll do everything possible to keep him out now.

My father and his siblings were all sent to boarding school at 7 - he's now a similar age to your Mum. It caused a huge amount of trauma and gave my Dad severe attachment issues. The "outward confidence" but inside brokenness alluded to by other posters very much rings true. I think he's found writing about it helpful and also ongoing therapy. I'm so sad for him though and it's certainly caused us issues as a family.

I wonder if there is any benefit in exploring trauma therapy, EFT maybe or whether there is place for Neurolinguistic Programming in this case.

I have an elderly relative that’s now in a care home with dementia and she behaves as though she is back in boarding school because the environments have similarities.

She hides things, says the staff with take things and hurt her, worries about visitors not coming back, worries about getting into trouble, etc.

It’s very sad to know she was so unhappy as a child, and that’s contributing to unhappiness again now.

No experience of boarding school here. However, I have heard a couple of people in their late 60s/ 70s say that their childhood memories have suddenly become more intense, with forgotten events (not necessarily traumatic) suddenly in their mind. Could whatever is going on be compounded by that?

There were (or are) nursing homes in Sydney where the staff stopped wearing official uniforms as they began to get Holocaust survivors through who would be getting terribly distressed. I think they just started wearing soft, floral clothes.

I went to boarding school aged 8 to 16 in the 80's/90's. Used to go home on the weekends when I was 8 and when my Mum used to drop me off on a Monday morning I used to run after her car crying and she still drove off. My son is 8 now and the thought of dumping him with strangers and nobody coming when he's crying in bed with aching legs or bad dreams makes me feel ill. Maybe not so bad when a teenager if given the choice yourself but 8 years old! WTF??

I think for your mum it might be worth seeking some therapeutic counselling. Unfortunately for your aunt it may be too late/as in, counselling may just be too distressing for her if she's already showing symptoms of dementia. You would need someone with experience of working with older people though - you don't necessarily want to 'surface' the memories but maybe just teach coping mechanisms? (Those are not therapy terms, I'm not a therapist, but hopefully you get what I mean).

I wonder if the older person's social work team can signpost you somewhere?

Unresolved trauma rears its ugly head at each life stage, as we view it with a different perspective from each era of our life.