13 February 2024 , 22:38
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Trinny Woodall says being sent to boarding school at a young age stunted her emotional development.
The 60-year-old fashion expert is the mother of 20-year-old daughter Lyla - who she shares with late ex-husband Jonathan Elichaoff who passed away in 2014 at the age of 55 , 11 years after they divorced. As a child, Trinny was a pupil at the prestigious Queen's Gate School in South Kensington, London - whose other past attendees include Queen Camilla, Tilda Swinton and Vanessa Redgrave.
Trinny later attended the Baston School for Girls in Hayes in London as well as schools in Germany and France, and was educated away from her parents who lived oversees during her school years. The What Not To Wear star says that seeing her own daughter attend a boarding school made her realise how young she had been when she attended the schools.
The star has explained that she thinks her emotional maturity was affected by being shipped off to school at such a young age. She has also explained how her family dynamic was affected by being away from her parents for such a large portion of the year.
Trinny shares a daughter named Lyla with her late ex-husband Johnny Elichaoff, who died in 2014 aged 55 (FILE)
Trinny opened up about her past to Sophie Ellis-Bextor (Dave Benett/Getty Images for Uni)Opening up to Sophie Ellis-Bextor on her Spinning Plates podcast, Trinny said: "I was little to go to boarding school and it's something that I don't always look deeply into because it just sort of happened. But when Lyla turned six and a half, I looked at Lyla's height, even, and I thought, 'My God,' at how little she was, how emotionally small she was. And I thought that stunts emotional development, and I think I was stunted in my emotional development - for a few years probably."
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Trinny went on to explained how she rarely saw her own parents. She revealed: "I went to boarding school at six and a half, then I saw [her parents] - you know - three times a year because they lived abroad. Sometimes I went to stay with my grandmother in Brighton and Hove, and Hove was really granny's. [It was] back-to-back granny's - so I just lived in granny land when I was quite a young age to 15."
Trinny’s mother died in 2020 after battling dementia. She shared her fear that her daughter, Lyla, may have been affected by the pandemic as it caused such disruptions to her formative years. She said: "Lyla went to university in Spain and it was quite difficult. She left school and she was what I call this Covid kid.
"Because from 16 to 18, when you and I were having the Summer of Love and we were finding ourselves and we were in relationships or meeting people, Lyla and her friends were at home. And so, an element of their emotional maturity did not grow. And then other elements overgrew because it was a time when there was a crisis in the world and they were a part of that crisis."
She added: "So, there was this kind of life and death moment going on which had an impact also on their ability to rush out into the world. I think quite a few kids became, not agoraphobic, but just this close to home."