Children who attend boarding school often leave with outwardly impressive levels of achievement, resiliance and independence - but at what cost? 

Leaving home at an early age - often as young as seven or eight - ruptures the attachment with parents or caregivers, and leaves the child to be raised in an institution without love. In order to survive this, children develop a strategic survival personality, which requires them to shut down their emotions and become little adults, unable to display - and on some level, even feel - the normal healthy emotions of childhood and adolecense.

This offers protection against homesickness and of painfully experiencing the abandonment wound whilst at school, but can have deep and lasting effects in later life, particularly around forging close, intimate relationships.