Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

by David C. Pollock

  Traditionally, most people moved through the various stages of each of these developmental tasks while living in one physical place or among one primary culture group. In that context, the world stayed constant. That meant there was a solid place against which rules could be tested and where decisions made could have a relatively predictable outcome. The process for moving through these developmental tasks happened as normally as learning to walk and talk does for most children. No one thought much about it. But this traditional world is not the one in which TCKs grow up. As a result, these developmental tasks are often being interrupted, or expedited, and it is from that process we see both early maturity and delayed adolescence. Here are some reasons for both among TCKs.

  EARLY MATURITY

  It’s not only others who see TCKs as “more mature.” They often feel more comfortable with older students rather than fellow classmates when they begin college back in their passport countries. Others are amazed at their confidence to travel the world alone or how well they communicate with adults. There are several reasons for these places where they seem “ahead of the game.”

  1.Broad base of knowledge and awareness.1. TCKs often have an “advanced for their years” knowledge of geography, global events, and politics in other countries and are interested in topics not usually discussed by younger people in their home cultures. Many TCKs have learned unusual practical skills at a very young age as well—such as how to set up solar energy panels to keep computers running for translation work in the Amazon jungle.

  2.Relationship to adults. TCKs generally feel quite comfortable with adults because they have had lots of experience with them. Generations usually mix much more in third culture communities than in the home country. Why? Because, at least traditionally, many expatriate communities live within relatively defined parameters: kids attend the same school; most of the parents appear at the same international or organizational functions; families may go to the only international church in town; and they bump into one another frequently in the one or two grocery stores that carry foods imported from their particular homeland. Since the children may already be friends through school, families visit as families rather than as adults only. In certain situations—such as homeschooling—some TCKs spend more time with adults than children, which makes them come across almost as “mini-adults.”

  3.Communication skills. Children who speak two or more languages fluently also seem like mini-adults. How could they have learned to speak like this so soon in life? Multilingual TCKs generally feel at ease using their languages to communicate with quite diverse groups. In fact, TCKs often serve as translators for their parents—again, a task usually reserved for adults. All this continues to increase their exposure to, participation in, and comfort with a world of culturally diverse adults as well as other children and gives them an unusual air of maturity.

  4. Early autonomy. In many ways, many TCKs have an earlier sense of autonomy than peers at home. By their early teenage years, TCKs literally know how to get around in the world and enjoy functioning in quite diverse ways and places. This may be the result of traveling alone to boarding school or having the opportunity as young children to explore their surroundings freely by trikes, bikes, and hikes. A reliable, safe public transportation system in some countries adds to that sense of autonomy. Many TCKs in Japan take the train to school for two hours each way, every day, in early elementary grades. When one TCK lived in Australia, he took a ferry and bus by himself to school every day at age eleven, while his friends back in the United States waited at the corner of their street for the school bus to pick them up.

  DELAYED ADOLESCENCE

  Ironically, while in many ways TCKs seem advanced for their years, there are also many ways they seem to lag far behind. In a survey of nearly 700 ATCKs, Ruth Hill Useem and Ann Baker Cottrell observed that it wasn’t unusual for TCKs to go through a delayed adolescence, often between the ages of 22 and 24, and sometimes even later.3 TCKs who have never heard the expression “delayed adolescence” have still sensed that they are definitely out of sync with their peers but can’t figure out why.

  What exactly does delayed adolescence mean? And why is it a characteristic of many TCKs? Let’s first define adolescence itself. Here’s one definition:

  Adolescence essentially begins when physiologically normal puberty starts. It ends when the person develops an adult identity and behavior [italics added]. This period of development corresponds roughly to the period between the ages of 10 and 19 years.4

  Basically, then, delayed adolescence simply means that it is taking TCKs longer than what has traditionally been considered “normal” to complete the emotional and psychological developmental tasks that move us from infancy to adulthood. The tasks we listed earlier—developing a sense of personal identity, building strong relationships, developing competence in decision making, and achieving independence—are all part of that process. Delayed adolescence doesn’t mean TCKs can’t complete these tasks. It simply means it may take a bit more time. Don’t forget: a child who breaks a leg before learning to walk will, in fact, walk in the end, but not as soon as others.

  But the question remains: Why is delayed adolescence so common for many TCKs? Figure 11-3 helps us understand some of the reasons.

  1. Cross-cultural mobility in developmental years. This reason relates to why cross-cultural transitions and high mobility during developmental years are so significant. As we’ve said before, part of completing these developmental tasks involves a testing of the rules, values, and beliefs learned in childhood during these adolescent years. One common way teens test is through direct challenges, something parents of teenagers around the world know only too well: “Why do I have to be in by midnight?” “Who says I can’t wear my hair like this?” After the testing is a period of integrating the cultural practices and values we decide (often unconsciously) to keep. We then use these to make decisions about how we will live as autonomous adults rather than continuing to live as children guided by external, parental rules alone. When the cultural rules are always changing, however, what happens to this process? This is, again, why the issues of cultural balance and mobility—and the age or ages when they occur—become very important. Often at the very time TCKs should be testing and internalizing the customs and values of whatever culture they’ve grown up in, that whole world, its familiar culture, and their relationships to it can change overnight with one plane ride. While peers in their new (and old) community are internalizing the rules of culture and beginning to move out with budding confidence, TCKs are still trying to figure out what the rules are. They aren’t free to explore their personal gifts and talents because they’re still preoccupied with what is or isn’t appropriate behavior. Children who have to learn to juggle many sets of cultural rules at the same time have a different developmental experience from children growing up in one basically permanent, dominant culture that they regard as their own.

  Figure 11-3 Delayed Adolescence for TCKs

  (© 2008 Barbara H. Knuckles)

  2. Extended compliance required. Some TCKs experience delayed development because of an extended compliance to cultural rules. In certain situations, TCKs are not as free as peers at home might be to test those rules during their teenage years. For instance, some TCKs need to comply with the status quo in a given situation for their own safety and acceptance. Instead of freedom to hang out with friends in shopping malls or on the street corners, many TCKs find themselves restricted, perhaps for safety reasons, to the military base or diplomatic compound. If they don’t want to be kidnapped or robbed, they must obey regulations that might not be necessary in the home country. Also, some TCKs belong to organizations with fairly rigid rules of what its members (and their families) may and may not do. An embassy kid doing drugs or a missionary daughter who gets pregnant can result in a quick repatriation for the family. In such cases, not only might the parents lose their jobs, but the TCKs might well lose what they consider to be home. This adds pressure to
follow community standards longer than they might otherwise.

  3.Lack of opportunities for meaningful choices. In the situations just mentioned, when TCKs aren’t as free as their friends in the home country might be to make some of the decisions about where they will go and what they will do, they don’t have the same opportunity to test parental and societal rules until a later period in life than usual.

  4. In addition, as we saw in the discussion of the delusion of choice in chapter 7, the fact that life is often unpredictable makes it hard for many TCKs to make decisions.It’s difficult to make a competent decision if the basis used to decide something is always changing. As mentioned before, a TCK’s lifestyle in many third culture communities is frequently dictated by the sponsoring agency. If the U.S. Navy assigns a parent for a six-month deployment, it doesn’t matter what the TCK does or doesn’t decide about it—that parent will be going. For these reasons and probably more, some TCKs don’t learn to take responsibility for the direction of their lives. They are more prone to just “letting it happen.”

  5. Family separations. TCKs who are separated from their parents during adolescence may not have the normal opportunity of challenging and testing parental values and choices as others do. Some who were separated in early years find themselves wanting to cling to parental nurture and make up for early losses. They don’t want to move into adulthood yet. Still others who have spent years away from home may idealize their parents in almost fantasy form. To challenge anything about their parents would call that dream into question. In situations such as these, we’ve seen many TCKs delay the normal adolescent process of differentiating their identity from that of their parents until their late twenties or even into their thirties.

  6. Operating between different systems. Incompatible educational and social factors also contribute to at least the appearance of delayed adolescence. The Danish TCK who graduates from an American-based international school may return to Denmark and discover that she must do two more years at the secondary level before going to university. Suddenly she is grouped with those younger than herself and treated as their peer. This is especially traumatic if she’s become accustomed to being seen as older than her years.

  7. The social slowness discussed earlier can contribute to delayed adolescence by severely impeding the normal developmental task of establishing and maintaining strong relationships—particularly with peers and members of the opposite sex. Judith Gjoen, a Dutch ATCK who grew up in Indonesia and is now a clinical counselor in Norway, wrote about the difficulties Europeans face on their return home after attending a predominantly international school.

  Dating is very American. Scandinavian ways of interrelating between the sexes are much more informal. There is much more flexibility in the sex roles. All boys learn to knit; all girls learn carpentry. Furthermore, a young person’s identity is not so strongly connected to “dating status.” from a scandinavian perspective, the American way can be slightly overdone and hysterical. You are not prepared for the european way of being together [males and females] when you have been socialized into an American system.5

  The development of other social skills may also be delayed by not knowing the unwritten rules in the TCK’s age group back home or in the new culture. How loud do you play music? How long do you talk on the phone? When do you engage in chitchat and when in deeper conversations? How do you behave with a friend of the opposite sex? When the rules around them have changed, TCKs sometimes retreat into isolation from others rather than try to cope.

  Sometimes the very maturity noted earlier coupled with the sometimes more hidden delayed adolescence may lead to unforeseen problems. The initial attraction of a young TCK to older, more mature people may result in the choosing of an older marriage partner. Unfortunately, while the “early maturity” of the TCK may make such a match seem like a good idea, the deeper delay in development may scuttle the relationship later on. Sometimes the TCK isn’t as ready for the responsibility or partnership of marriage as he or she appeared to be because the issues of personal identity, good decision making, and ability to build strong relationships haven’t been resolved. Other times, as in any marriage, when the younger partner goes on to develop a deeper, truer maturity, the older spouse doesn’t always continue to grow at the same rate. This can leave the younger partner disappointed, disillusioned, or dissatisfied.

  Uneven maturity offers almost paradoxical benefits and challenges, as do all other TCK characteristics. The very reasons for some of the delays in adolescence are rooted in the greatest benefits of the third culture experience. Once they are aware of and understand the process, however, TCKs and/or their parents can be alert to and guard against a certain smugness or sense of elitism they sometimes exhibit about how “mature” they are, while at the same time not panicking about areas where they still need to catch up. Given time, the maturity process will sort itself out into a more even flow as they, like others, move on through adolescence—delayed or not—into adulthood. In the end, through this very process of having to figure out some of these matters with conscious thought rather than an unconscious process, many TCKs and ATCKs find themselves with a very clear and strong sense of personal identity. Perhaps some of their process is only defined as “uneven” because it is judged by models that may not be as standardized as once thought in these days of changing cultural patterns around our world.

  Delayed Adolescent Rebellion

  A delayed adolescence is painful enough for the TCK who keeps wondering why he or she can’t be like others, but even more painful—not only for TCKs, but for their families as well—is a delayed adolescent rebellion: when the normal testing of rules either starts unexpectedly late or becomes exaggerated in an all-out, open defiance of nearly every possible convention the family and/or community hold dear and extends far beyond the adolescent years. Obviously, this type of rebellion also occurs in families that don’t live abroad, but we want to look at a few specific reasons for a delayed rebellion in some TCKs and then at why it often continues later than the normal teenage years.

  1. Extension of delayed adolescence. In any journey to adulthood, there are always those who in the process of testing the rules of their upbringing decide they will avoid adults’ expectations, no matter what. For whatever reasons, they assume an “anti-identity.” This process of rebellion is often an offshoot of normal adolescent testing of cultural norms. When that normal process is delayed for all the reasons mentioned earlier, the rebellion that often comes during that time will be delayed.

  2. End of the need for compliance. Sometimes it seems that young people who have been forced to comply with a fairly rigorous system throughout their teenage years decide to try everything they couldn’t do before, once they are finally free from those external constraints. Rather than the usual process of testing rules a few at a time while still under a parent’s watchful eye, they go off to university and seemingly “go off the deep end.”

  This form of rebellion may actually be a positive—though slightly misguided—move toward independence. In these situations, parents and others may need to understand the reason for the behavior and be patient in the process, while also pointing out (when possible) that some of this behavior may be counterproductive to the goal of the independence they seek.

  3. Loneliness. Sometimes the rebellion is a plea for help. We have met many TCKs who have tried to express to their parents that they need a home base; that they feel desperately lonely when vacation time comes and everyone else goes home and they stay in the dorm because their parents are still overseas and relatives in the home country seem like strangers; or that they are struggling in school and want to quit. But the parents never seem to hear. Instead, they send e-mail messages with platitudes like “Cheer up,” “It will get better,” or “Trust God,” or they explain once more why they need to stay in the job they’re in.

  Eventually, some TCKs finally scream through their behavior the message they have not been able to communicate verbally: “
I need you to come here—to be near me.” When they get arrested for drugs, or get pregnant, or try to commit suicide, they know their parents will come—at least for a short period. Unfortunately, the parents who didn’t hear the earlier verbal or nonverbal messages often don’t understand, even at this point of major rebellion, the deep loneliness and longing their child is experiencing. They judge the rebellion without understanding the reason and a deeper wedge than ever is driven between parent and child.

  At that point, the TCK’s behavior may become more extreme than before, and whatever form the rebellion takes—drugs, alcohol, workaholism, some esoteric cause—becomes a way in itself to numb the pain of longing for some type of security and home base. The sad thing is that until the loneliness and longing are addressed, the TCK will stay walled off, often in very destructive behavior, fulfilling the worst prophecies made about him or her.

  4. Anger. One of the common manifestations of unresolved grief, anger, may erupt in this time of rebellion and intensify it. The anger may be directed at parents, the system they’ve grown up in, their home country, God, or other targets. Unfortunately, once again people don’t always stop to find out what’s behind the explosion. The judgment and rejection of the TCK’s experience increases the pain and fuels further anger and rebellion.