The Child Left at the School Gates

What happened when you arrived at boarding school the very first time?

That first hour at school might be seared into your memory or you may not have any memory of it at all. But there was a moment when you said goodbye to your parents and became a ‘boarding school child’. The child who had to grow up quickly and learn to look after herself.

I have a vague memory of unpacking my suitcase. My Mum is there helping me, but I’ve no idea where Dad and my sisters were.

Then I remember standing in the hallway of the house which had become my home for the next seven years – standing alone on polished wooden floorboards with the front door at one end and the door to the dayroom at the other end. I have no memory of saying goodbye before crossing the threshold into becoming a boarding school child. But in that memory I feel very alone and lost. And strangely there are no people - no other girls, no housemistress, just me.

The child you were before boarding school may have been happy and carefree or may have already been facing challenges at home. But that child lived in a family home with parents, siblings, pets, friends, toys… That was the ‘Innocent Child’. That child was allowed to have feelings, could ask for help and comfort and was able to make choices about how he spent his time. The boarding school child had none of those comforts and freedoms.

In those first days, boarding school was a steep learning curve. Incomprehensible rules, strange rituals, meaningless cruelty and almost no autonomy or self-expression. There was no room for that Innocent Child. The only way to survive was to create a new persona – someone with no vulnerability, no feelings, no needs. That persona was the creation of the ‘Tiny Architect’. The Tiny Architect built an adult persona – but it was a child’s idea of what an adult is. That was our ‘Child-Created Adult’ - our ‘Strategic Survival Personality’.

So what happened to the Innocent Child?

I was a shy, sensitive child and in the harsh environment of boarding school I grieved painfully for home and I cried. I cried a lot. And that was deeply embarrassing, so I hid it.

I wanted to grow up and stop being the ‘cry-baby’. In that wish I exiled my Innocent Child and supplanted her with someone who tried to fit in and finding that very difficult, retreated behind the books I loved. I mutated from cry-baby to bookworm and swot.

The boarding school child’s Child-Created Adult (or strategic survival personality) doesn’t have time for the softer qualities of the Innocent Child – the vulnerability, needs, feelings, fears and especially not the grief.

But a well-rounded adult – an adult adult – needs those qualities too. We need them to be in relationship with others and with ourselves, and we need them for our own health and emotional well-being.

We can only become fully adult when we reclaim and reintegrate the Innocent Child.

But what does that actually look like? How do we reintegrate the Innocent Child

One of the most powerful tools we have is self-compassion. Isn’t it strange how when we mess up we so often speak to ourselves harshly? As if we’ve internalised a strict parent or maybe the headmistress or housemaster who was so keen to inflict punishment?

What happened to the voice of the person who loved you? The person who would hold you and comfort you when you were frightened or upset. The person who would tell you it’s ok to get things wrong and make mistakes.

Self-compassion may feel very strange at first. You may think that you need to tell yourself off or put yourself down in order to do better, but believe me that is not true!

When you speak to yourself harshly you make it harder to step into your true adult self. When you speak with compassion and understanding you calm the emotional centre in your brain and allow the adult part to step up. The adult part is better able to comfort the little you inside – your Innocent Child – and to recognise what that little part brings.

Self-compassion helps us to build neural pathways which connect the different parts of the brain and in so doing help to reintegrate parts of ourselves which we have shut off or shut down.

You can welcome all of you home – the Innocent Child, the Child-Created Adult and any other parts which have been trying to run your life for you. And with them all welcomed into the fold, you will feel more at home in yourself.

That’s part of the work of coming home. This is the topic of next week’s masterclass, Homecoming: Reclaiming the Innocent Child. We’re meeting on Zoom on Thursday 23rd. If this resonated with you, I’d love to see you there. If you can’t make it there will be a replay, so sign up anyway to get access to the recording.