Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

by David C. Pollock

  Chris, a Finnish TCK, returned to Helsinki after a childhood in Namibia. While living there, separation from extended family seemed normal. All the other TCKs she knew had done the same. But that hadn’t been the experience for her Finnish relatives. One evening, just after chRistmas, Chris listened to her cousins reminisce about their childhood in Finland. They talked of family Christmas traditions, summer vacations at the family cottage on the lake, birthday celebrations and weddings when the family gathered. Suddenly, Chris felt overwhelmed by what she had missed growing up. Later, in a gathering of TCKs from various countries, Chris spoke of how living overseas had robbed her of knowing the closeness of her extended family back home.

  Loss of the past that was. While some TCKs grieve for experiences they missed, other TCKs grieve for the past no longer available to them. People who live as adults in the same country where they grew up can usually go back and revisit their old house, school, playground, and church. In spite of inevitable changes, they can still reminisce “on site,” but a highly mobile TCK often lacks this opportunity. And for many whose host countries have experienced the devastation of war or great political turmoil, the world they knew will never be accessible again, even if they physically return. This is a great loss.

  In any of the hidden losses we’ve just mentioned, the main issue again is not the grief, per se. The real issue is that in these types of invisible losses, where the tangible and intangible are so inextricably intertwined, no one actually died or was divorced and nothing was physically stolen. Contrary to obvious losses, there are no markers, no rites of passage recognizing them as they occur—no recognized way to mourn. Yet each hidden loss relates to the major human needs we all have of belonging, feeling significant to others, and being understood. The majority of TCKs are adults before they acknowledge and come to terms with the depth of their grief over any or all of these areas of hidden loss.

  Hidden losses and fear aren’t the only reason for unresolved grief, however. Even when losses are recognized, other factors may prevent a healthy resolution of grief.

  LACK OF PERMISSION TO GRIEVE

  ATCK Harry wrote to the alumni magazine of his school in response to earlier letters in which various ATCKs had talked about painful issues from their childhood. “Stop fussing,” he wrote. “Don’t you think any kid in the Harlem ghetto would trade places with you in a second?”

  Sometimes TCKs receive a very direct message that lets them know it’s not okay to express their fears or grief. Many are asked to be “brave soldiers,” perhaps particularly in the military and missionary context. Colonialists’ offspring were encouraged to “keep a stiff upper lip.” In Military Brats, Mary Edwards Wertsch wrote of a girl who came down the stairs one morning and asked her Mom, “What would happen if Dad got shot in Vietnam?” The mother’s instant reply was “Don’t—you—ever—say—that!”6

  Also, when parents are serving noble causes—saving the country from war, representing the government on delicate negotiations, or preaching salvation to a lost world—how can a child admit grief or fear? The child would feel too much shame for being selfish, wrong, or not spiritual or patriotic enough if they acknowledged how much it hurt to leave or be left. In such situations, TCKs may easily learn that negative feelings of almost any kind, including grief, aren’t allowed. They begin to wear a mask to cover those feelings and conform to the expectations and socially approved behavior of the community.

  TCKs who grow up in a missionary community may face an added burden. Some mission people see an admission of painful feelings as a lack of faith. TCKs who want to keep their faith often feel they can’t acknowledge any pain they have experienced. Conversely, other TCKs from such communities take the opposite tack; they believe that in order to deal with their grief, they must deny the faith they’ve been taught. They, too, have forgotten (or never grasped?) the paradoxical nature of the TCK experience we mentioned earlier.

  LACK OF TIME TO PROCESS

  Unresolved grief can also be the result of insufficient time to process loss. Any person who experiences loss needs a period of time to face the pain, mourn and accept the loss, come to closure, and move on. In the era when most international travelers went overseas by ship, the trip could take weeks, providing a built-in transition period that allowed time for the grief process. In today’s world of jet travel, however, there is no transition time to deal properly with the inevitable grief of losing what has been left behind. A world disappears with the closing of the airplane door and when the door is opened, the receiving community is excited to welcome the returnees. How can TCKs mourn losing the world they’ve loved when, because there is no visible ceremony such as a funeral, the community surrounding them has no idea of the depth of their loss? In fact, they can become impatient if these TCKs are not ready to move on immediately into the many wonderful plans prepared for them.

  LACK OF COMFORT

  The presence or lack of comfort is another huge factor in whether grief is resolved. In 1984, Sharon Willmer first identified this as a key issue for TCKs when she wrote Dave Pollock, “If someone were to ask me, ‘From your experience as a therapist and friend of [TCKs], what do you see as the [TCKs’] greatest need?’ I would reply, beyond the shadow of a doubt. . . That they need to be comforted and helped to understand what it means to be a person.”7 We’ve already begun looking at the issues relating to personal identity, but to understand why people need comfort and why it’s often missing for TCKs, we must first look at what comfort is and isn’t and how it differs from encouragement.

  Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines comfort as “consolation in time of trouble or worry.”8 Comfort doesn’t change the situation itself, nor can it take away the pain, but it relays the message that someone cares and understands. Comfort validates grief and gives permission for the grieving process to take place. For example, when a person walks up to a widow standing by her husband’s casket and puts an arm around her shoulder, that gesture, with or without words, is comforting. It can’t bring the husband back to life or stop the tears or the pain, but it lets the widow know her grief is accepted and understood. She’s not alone in her sorrow.

  Unfortunately, in their very efforts to help another person “feel better,” people often confuse comfort with encouragement and end up giving neither. Encouragement is a person’s attempt to change the griever’s perspective. It may be a reminder to look at the bright side of a situation instead of the loss or to think about a past success and presume this present situation will turn out just as well.

  Obviously there’s a time for both comfort and encouragement, but what happens when the two are confused? If the grieving widow is told that it’s a good thing at least her husband had a substantial life insurance policy, how does she feel? Neither comforted nor encouraged! When encouragement is given before comfort, the subtle or not so subtle message is “Buck up; you shouldn’t feel so low.” It becomes a shame message rather than an encouragement.

  Perhaps because a TCK’s losses are far less visible than the widow’s, this mixup between comfort and encouragement can sometimes prevent TCKs from being comforted. There are several ways people may unknowingly try to encourage rather than comfort TCKs and thus accomplish neither.

  Discounting grief. As TCKs and their families prepare to board the plane, Mom and Dad admonish them not to cry by saying, “Don’t worry. You’ll make new friends quickly once we get there.” In not acknowledging the pain involved in the good-bye, they communicate the hidden message that their son or daughter shouldn’t be sad. What’s the big deal about saying good-bye to these friends when they can be so easily replaced? Somehow, though, the TCKs still feel sad and end up thinking something must be wrong with them. After a while there is nothing to do but bury the pain.

  Comparing grief to a higher good. When TCKs express sadness at an approaching move or loss, adults may try to cheer them up with the reminder that the reasons behind this lifestyle—and thus the losses involved—are of such i
mportance (defending or representing the country, saving the world, earning enough money to pay for the child’s later educational bills) that the TCKs shouldn’t complain about a few hardships along the way. Unfortunately, this noble reasoning still is not comforting; in fact, it is shaming. Generally, TCKs already understand— and often agree with—the reason why their parents have a particular career and lifestyle. Most TCKs aren’t asking their parents to change. All they’re trying to say is that, in spite of what they know, it still hurts to leave friends and a place they love dearly.

  Denying grief. It’s not only TCKs who may deny their grief; adults around them often do the same. To comfort another person, to say “I understand,” is to admit there’s a reason for grieving. Adults who busily mask their own sense of loss by denial can’t afford to admit they understand the sad TCK. If they did, their own internal protective structures might tumble down and leave them quite unprotected.

  One therapist asked us if anyone had ever done a study on how parents react when they know they must send their kids away to school at age six. Bowlby9 and others have written about how early separations between parents and children affect a child’s ability to attach later to those parents or others, but we know of no official study regarding how the parents cope. In asking ATCKs for their thoughts on this, a number have told us how their parents stopped hugging them in their early years so these ATCKs wouldn’t “miss it” (the hugs) when they left for school at the age of six. Surely this was a loss for both parent and child.

  Once again, the losses TCKs encounter—recognized or unrecognized—and the grief that follows aren’t in themselves the biggest problems. These losses are natural, and when that grief can be expressed, the grief is good—a productive way to deal with the pain. The biggest problem is unresolved grief. Grief that is not dealt with directly emerges in some way—in forms that are destructive and that can last a lifetime. That’s “bad grief,” and it needs attention and resolution. part III offers many concrete suggestions for how to deal with losses as they happen in positive ways so grief does not need to accumulate in the ways it has for so many TCKs in the past.

  Lessons from the TCK Petri Dish

  When we look at some CCKs, it is easy to think, “Well, the mobility issues that affect TCKs really don’t apply. An international adoptee makes one long original trip and then may stay in one home for the rest of his or her childhood. Children of minorities or educational CCKs may have one address from birth to university. How can these issues of mobility apply to them?”

  This question is all part of the ongoing discovery process. For us, it is relatively clear how living and growing up among many cultural worlds creates issues of identity and belonging for many types of CCKs. We are not yet as clear on why it is that so often when we discuss issues related to transition, loss, and unresolved grief, so many CCKs who did not grow up in a traditional TCK environment also come to us with tears to say how helpful it was to find new language and understanding for their own story. In some situations, it seems even the aspect of mobility between cultural worlds is hidden: the educational CCK who goes between majority and minority culture each day, the domestic CCK whose family relocated often but never outside the country, the bicultural child who changes cultural worlds with each visit to Grandma and Grandpa.

  But for many other types of CCKs (and for non-CCKs as well), it seems the places they relate to are not the physical transitions as much as the emotional experiences we describe. In particular, they tell of their hidden losses and how others do not understand. The international adoptee may wonder what it would have been like to grow up in the land of his birth. The immigrant’s child tells of the loss she feels when she visits her cousins in the Philippines and realizes they have close family ties she will never have because of the distance. But, like TCKs, to express such things seems ungrateful for the obvious good and blessings they also have in life. Others try to remind them of their “blessings” before acknowledging the reality of their losses. In days ahead, our awareness of the parallels between all types of CCKs in this area will, we believe, only increase.

  We hope that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of issues related to mobility will help all TCKs/ATCKs and other groups of CCKs/ACCKS—including their families and all who work with them—find ways to work through the challenges so they can enjoy the adventures of life even more fully. But we also trust that understanding matters such as the hidden losses of life, the way lack of permission to grieve or discounting of grief can unintentionally happen, will allow people of all backgrounds—TCKs/CCKs or not—to translate these principles back to their own stories and find new language and understanding for their journeys too.

  Part II

  The TCK Profile

  IN PART I WE FOCUSED PRIMARILY on defining third culture kids and explaining their world. Now we will look in depth at the specific benefits and challenges of this experience. Some benefits and challenges are seen most clearly in the shorter term, while others become more obvious with time.

  We will examine the character traits this lifestyle fosters along with how it affects interpersonal relationships and developmental patterns. While we most often use the term TCK alone for simplicity’s sake, these are characteristics that often become even more visible in adulthood for ATCKs. Because this is a group profile, not every characteristic will fit every person. But the “a-ha!” Moment of recognition, which we have seen among countless TCKs and ATCKs, tells us these characteristics are valid as an overall representation of their world.

  CHAPTER 6

  Benefits and Challenges

  Besides the drawbacks of family separation and the very real adjustment on the permanent return to the [home country], a child growing up abroad has great advantages. He [or she] learns, through no conscious act of learning, that thoughts can be transmitted in many languages, that skin color is unimportant . . . That certain things are sacred or taboo to some people while to others they’re meaningless, that the ordinary word of one area is a swearword in another.

  We have lived in tulsa for five years . . . I am struck again and again by the fact that so much of the sociology, feeling for history, geography, questions [about] others that our friends’ children try to understand through textbooks, my sisters and I acquired just by living.1

  — Rachel Miller Schaetti

  Introduction: The TCK Profiles

  The often paradoxical benefits and challenges of the TCK Profile are sometimes described as being like opposite sides of the same coin, but in reality they are more like the contrasting colored strands of thread woven together into a tapestry. As each strand crosses with a contrasting or complementary color, a picture begins to emerge, but no one strand alone tells the full story. For example, the high mobility of a TCK’s life often results in special relationships with people throughout the world, but it also creates sadness at the chronic loss of these relationships. That very pain, however, provides the opportunity to develop a greater empathy for others. A TCK’s expansive worldview, which enriches history classes and gives perspective to the nightly news, also makes the horror of the slaughter of Sudanese citizens in the refugee camps of Darfur a painful reality. That same awareness can be what motivates a TCK’s concern for solving those kinds of tragic problems. And so it goes.

  Some of the characteristics—as well as the benefits and challenges—are primarily a result of the cross-cultural nature of the third culture experience. Others are more directly shaped by the high mobility of the lifestyle. Most of the profile, however, is this weaving together of these two dominant realities.

  We begin by discussing some of the most common general benefits and challenges we have seen among TCKs and ATCKs, but before we do, let us make it clear once more that when we use the word challenge, we purposefully do not infer the word liability. A challenge is something people have the choice to face, deal with, and grow from. A liability can only be something that pulls someone down. Some may say we concentrate too much on the challenges
, but if that criticism is valid, it is for a reason. We have seen the benefits of this experience enrich countless TCKs’ lives, whether or not they stop to consciously define or use them. Many have also found unconscious ways to deal with the challenges and make them a productive aspect of their lives in one way or another. We have also seen, however, that for some TCKs (and those around them) the unrecognized challenges have caused years of frustration as they struggle to deal with matters that have no name, no definition. In the process, they have lost sight of the benefits they have also received. It is our hope that in naming both the benefits and challenges, and then offering suggestions in part III on how to build intentionally on the strengths and deal productively with the challenges, many more TCKs will be able to maximize the great gifts that can come from their lives and live out with joy the richness of their heritage. We begin.

  Expanded Worldview versus Confused Loyalties

  BENEFIT: EXPANDED WORLDVIEW

  An obvious benefit of the TCK experience is that while growing up in a multiplicity of countries and cultures, TCKs not only observe firsthand the many geographical differences around the world, but they also learn how people view life from different philosophical and political perspectives. Some people think of Osama bin Laden as a hero; others believe he’s a villain. Western culture is time and task oriented; in Eastern culture, interpersonal relationships are of greater importance. The TCK’s awareness that there can be more than one way to look at the same thing starts early in life. We listened to these rather remarkable stories during a meeting in Malaysia with TCKs ages five to twelve who were all growing up in Asia.