Exploring Boarding School Challenges for Women and Third Culture Kids: Worlds Away from Home

Through personal testimonies, this book offers insights into the boarding school experiences of women and third culture kids (TCKs), examining the particular challenges for those who are sent away from their families and all that is familiar to board in a country that feels worlds away from home.

The stereotype of expatriate families is of glamorous lives lived in exotic locations with access to wealth and privilege. However, many of these families feel pressure to send their children ’home’ to boarding school in their passport country without understanding the long-term implications of this choice. This book explores such long-term effects, starting with laying an accessible theoretical framework for the reader by drawing on scholarship from the fields of psychology, the study of TCKs, and the growing understanding of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The text then moves into the personal testimonies of 16 individuals, most of whom are TCKs or cross-cultural boarders, shedding light on the particular challenges they’ve faced. The book ends by offering hope and help with chapters providing insights and practical strategies for supporting those affected by boarding school.

This user-friendly, accessible volume will appeal to professionals working with transcultural boarders, ex-boarders, or those who are considering sending their own children to boarding school.

Nicky Moxey, an ex-boarder, originally spent 33 years as a project manager and Agile coach. She is retraining as an integrative counsellor and intends to work with boarding school survivors after she qualifies.

Linda Devereux is a third culture kid with more than forty years of teaching experience in schools and universities. Linda is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University, Australia, where she researches and publishes in the fields of transcultural childhoods, life narrative, boarding school and the transition to university.