Being a boat kid, an army brat, or a multiple-times-an-immigrant kid isn’t without benefits: ‘Third Culture Kids’ (TCKs) are more adaptable, more open-minded, and better cross-cultural communicators than our single-cultured counterparts.
Yet, travelling a lot between cultures we have no ‘birthright’ to participate in isn’t without challenges either. Often the people we need help from most- our parents- are woefully unaware of how hard it can be to be a TCK.
Don’t get me wrong, we have great perks to counter the hardships: we have international networks of friends, we can speak multiple languages, and we get to travel the world, for pete’s sake! But on the other side, we grow up without a single culture to identify with, a single friend group who totally understands the nuances of our individual experiences, etc. Even answering a simple getting-to-know-you-question like, ‘where are you from?’ is a headache that TCKs don’t know how to answer. Whenever I’m asked, it feels more like a punch to the gut than a question.
Not to mention, TCKs are more likely to get depressed or anxious when we return to our birth countries than when we’re ‘abroad’. For us, being foreign is home.
So, what can parents do to help us through life?
Realise it’s harder for us than it is for you. When you’re a kid, you don’t get a choice in whether or not you’re moving. Every time you move, you loose friends, you have to set up shop in another place, and then leave again. Sure, parents go through this too, but parents have the choice to say No, I don’t want to leave this country. Kids don’t. And that sucks for us, especially when we aren’t old enough to understand why we have to move and loose all our friends, culture, and everyday experiences.
Give us time, not money. Kids need love and affection to grow, and it’s no different with TCKs. Family is the one constant for most of us, so take the time to build love and affection. Many parents of TCKs have busy jobs, well-paying jobs, etc, that mean they can’t spend a lot of time at home. That’s fine; that’s the reality for a lot of people. But when you’re home, make sure you’re making memories, not frozen dinners and reruns of the same show every night.
Kids need belonging, recognition, and connection. Adults often think ‘Oh, kids adapt fast. They’ll get over it’. But I’ll say it again, in bold: kids need belonging, recognition, and connection, and with each move, these things are torn from our lives. We’re forced to try to find them in a new place, new culture, new language we might not even speak. We tend to put too much emphasis on this rebuilding, and not enough on what we’ve lost.
And yes, leaving a place, you are loosing what you had there- even if it is to gain something elsewhere. This means you need to help your kids mourn what they had there: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Otherwise they’re going to repress that loss until it becomes depression in later life, which will be a far bigger problem.
Often, when we first move, we aren’t going to follow your advice. ‘Why don’t you make some friends at your new school?’ Well, you’re probably going to find us on Skype at 2AM with our friends three timezones away. This is fine. This is normal. We need to have a steady group of friends, otherwise we feel so alone it’s impossible to exist. Most TCKs eventually grow out of this phase- some of my friends did it in weeks, I did it in six long years of adjustment and settling for single-cultured friends who had no interest in anything other than the most recent episode of Britain’s Got Talent… everyone develops at their own pace.
Ask about our experiences. Where we’ve lived, what we’ve identified with, what’s been fun, what worries us, etc… These kinds of questions allow us to remember old places fondly and express our lives in a healthy way, rather than repressing them as something people don’t want to hear about.
Remember home for you isn’t home for us. When I finally figured out I was a TCK (I’d known something was abnormal about me for some time, I never knew there was a name for it until the ripe old age of twenty), I talked to my mother about it.
‘Oh,’ She said. ‘I always assumed you identified as British.’
It took really thinking about it, reading a few articles, watching a few TED Talks, for us all to concede how strange this really is, when you think about it. I’d been born in Britain, but left when I was mere weeks old, and only came back fourteen years later. What did I know about being British? I’d never even met most of my family members, and when I did they weren’t anything like me. And what did I know about Britain? Tea and Crumpets. Did I know what a crumpet was? Absolutely not.
Would my transition back to the UK have been smoother if I hadn’t been led to think of it as ‘home’? Home is a concept which insinuates instant community and belonging… it has nothing to do with my or my parents passports. Parents of TCKs would do well to remember this.
Don’t be hurt if we aren’t as patriotic as you– really, it’s only natural we question more of our passport countries than you do, because we simultaneously have an outsider’s perspective and an insider’s passion for national affairs.
Teach us about where we come from. TCKs don’t get to be raised with our single culture or single heritage, so we have to make do with what we have. We have parents who probably were raised in our birth country, and who know enough to pass down to us. Part of feeling a sense of belonging is having a background, and without knowing at least a little of your DNA’s heritage, it’s twice as hard to build yourself up with a steady sense of identity.
Be prepared for us to reject parts of your culture. Part of the fabric of what it is to be TCK is not fitting neatly into any one cultural box. You can’t Marie-Kondo us away, and you shouldn’t try to! Just trust that we’ll accept the parts of our shared culture that make sense to us, and we’ll try to respect the rest. But first teach us where we come from. Then we’ll talk.
Don’t you dare try to fix us. TCKs are NOT broken. We’re just different- and if you don’t think that’s a bonus, go read the introduction of this article again.
Arm yourself with information. There are some great books on TCKs, some excellent articles (though this one is the best, objectively speaking), and frankly unmissable TED Talks.
Don’t feel bad about raising us on-the-go. Is life for a TCK more challenging than it is for most kids? Absolutely. Would we have it any other way? Absolutely not. Because of the way I was raised, I’ve struggled to fit in. I’ve struggled to learn new languages. I’ve been through anxiety and depression, and I’ve come out the other end not only walking but sprinting. Your kids will do the same thing. I know very few TCKs who aren’t grateful at all for the colourful, messy, organised chaos that is their backstory.
Culturally Confused 