Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

by David C. Pollock

  As a corollary, a common regret we hear from ATCKs is they never really got involved with the surrounding culture when they were children. Whether it happened because they lived on a military base, went off to boarding school, or played only with expatriate friends, many consider this a loss. As adults, they realize they could have learned so much more and wish they had studied the language or taken time to learn how to cook the wonderful local dishes they enjoyed when they went out or simply found a way to make friends among those from the local culture.

  Keep Relationships Solid

  Over and over TCKs echo what Hendrik says—that the ultimate place of belonging and home comes in relationships, not place. These are the pieces of life that cannot be taken away when they are built well, for they are the places of the heart.

  DEVELOP FAMILY TRADITIONS

  Traditions bind people and groups together. They are visible markers of shared history and celebrate a unity of thought, purpose, or relationship. Every nation has them, every ethnic group has them, and, hopefully, every family has them. Often a family’s traditions evolve without special planning. Uncle Fred pulls out his mandolin at every reunion and family members old and young sing along. No one has consciously decided this will be a tradition, but the family gathering wouldn’t be the same if Uncle Fred and his mandolin weren’t there. These are the Moments that build a family’s unique sense of identity and belonging.

  Third culture families have at least as much need for traditions as other families do—maybe more. But, because they aren’t always at the family reunions to hear Uncle Fred, they may have to do a little more conscious planning. It’s important to develop at least some traditions that are transportable and replicable in whatever culture and surroundings the family might be. These traditions may be as simple as letting each family member choose the menu for his or her birthday supper every year or as complicated as making a piñata stuffed with candy for a particular holiday once a year.

  Developing traditions in cross-cultural settings isn’t just important—it’s fun! As new ideas gleaned from different places are incorporated, traditions also become a way of marking family history. In Liberia, a hot dog roast on the beach defined Christmas Eve for some expatriates—not a traditional custom in most snow-covered lands, but a nice one to carry back home (even if the hot dogs must be roasted in a fireplace!) as a distinctive reminder of the family’s history.

  Build Strong Ties with Community

  TCKs usually grow up far from blood relatives, so finding substitute aunts, uncles, and grandparents wherever TCKs live can be very important in creating “extended family.” Sometimes these people will be host country citizens; sometimes they will be within the third culture community itself. Parents can foster such relationships by inviting these special people to join in celebrating the TCK’s birthday, allowing their child to go shopping with them, or in other ways appropriate for the situation. This “created” extended family gives TCKs the experience of growing up in a close community, even without blood relatives. As ATCKs remember their childhood, some of these relationships rank among their fondest memories. And don’t lose touch with this “family” when you move. As much as possible, continue this thread of connection to help TCKs feel that their life is a continuous process, not one broken into many pieces.

  BUILD STRONG TIES WITH EXTENDED FAMILY

  Relatives in the home country (or wherever they live) are another important part of a TCK’s life, and relationships with them need to be fostered. A great way to cultivate these relationships is by bringing a grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, or cousin to visit. A visit not only helps TCKs get to know their relatives better, but also lets relatives see TCKs in their own environment—the place where these children do, in fact, shine. It also builds a place of shared history with extended family that TCKs may otherwise miss. In addition, TCKs love to return “home” and be able to talk to family members who know what they’re talking about. Even if relatives cannot make a trip to see them overseas, it’s important for TCKs to maintain contact with their relatives as much as possible through Skype, Facebook, instant messaging, e-mail, faxes, telephone, and pictures. This type of relationship building goes a long way to creating a sense of continuity throughout life.

  Developing closeness with relatives at home becomes especially important if and when the time comes for TCKs to repatriate while parents continue living overseas. These relatives’ homes can be the places where TCKs go for school breaks, vacations, and weekends when parents are away.

  One reminder here: the time to plan for this interaction with extended family starts at the beginning. This contact also helps keep children fluent in the mother tongue of their parent(s). Here’s what happened to one family who didn’t maintain this contact.

  I spoke to my parents-in-law, who are German and do not speak English, about how they felt about having two grandsons who only spoke English for many years. Now both boys speak reasonable German, but that is a fairly recent change. They are now both teenagers, so Oma and Opa have had 10 years of little or no real communication with their “foreign” grandsons.3

  When this happens, everyone loses—so don’t forget language learning and/or teaching as part of your plan if this is needed.

  BUILD STRONG TIES WITH FRIENDS

  Friends are an enormous blessing for many TCKs. Indeed, many TCKs thrive in international schools and communities where there is no given norm for race or nationality. In many places, public transportation systems make it easy to form social gatherings at a favorite cybercafe on weekends. As they move from country to country, TCKs can keep up with friends in ways never before possible. Yet this here-and-now communication system can affect new connections. TCKs in a new place may spend so much time keeping in touch with friends from the “old place” via e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, or Facebook that they don’t make the effort to develop new friendships in their schools or community. Initially, parents should not be alarmed at such behavior. It is one of the “new normals” in today’s world. However, if this pattern persists for a long period and their children refuse to engage in the local scene, parents should find ways to encourage face-to-face contact in the new surroundings. They might invite another family over who have children of similar age, or find an area of particular interest, such as a sports team or choir, that the child could join.

  In the end, however, as TCKs move on through life and become ATCKs, it is often reconnecting with friends from the past that validates the TCK experience and proves that the third culture world and experience wasn’t a dream. Attending school reunions and returning to visit the home or homes of their childhood are all ways TCKs and ATCKs can maintain connections with the various pieces of their lives. Such friendships are a gift that tops the list for many ATCKs when they look back at their past.

  Return to the Same “Home” during Each Leave

  Whenever practical, third culture families should return to the same place each time they go on home leave. Children who change countries every two or three years as well as those who stay in one host country their entire lives need the sense that there is at least one physical place in their passport country to identify as home. When staying in the same physical house isn’t possible, families should try to relocate nearby so that TCKs can keep the same school, church, and friends. It’s also helpful when visiting friends or relatives in other places to stay long enough to establish a basis for the relationship that can be built upon during the next leave.

  While it’s good to foster these relationships in the home country, families shouldn’t spend their entire leave visiting people. When every evening is spent with the adults chatting happily in one room and the TCKs and children from the host family eyeing each other warily in another, and when every night is spent in a different bed, this overload of travel can be stressful. But these trips can also be fun when parents include fun, kid-friendly activities. Wise parents make time for nights in motels, camping trips, or other private times during
their travel to reinforce their sense of being a family in this land as well as in the host country.

  Acquire “Sacred Objects”

  As we have mentioned before, artifacts from countries where they have lived or visited eventually become the TCK’s portable history to cart around the world in future years. It’s important to take back meaningful, portable objects from each place TCKs have lived, or even visited. These help to connect all the places and experiences of their lives. During her childhood, ATCK Jennifer acquired a set of carved ebony elephant bookends, a lamp (whose base included more elephants), feather paintings, and other ebony carvings to hang on the wall. At university and in the 16 locations where she has lived since her wedding, when the bookends are in place, the paintings and carvings hung on the wall, and the lamp turned on, she’s home.

  One German TCK, Dirk, summed up best what we are trying to say. When we asked him what he thought of his experience as a TCK, he said, “The thing I like best about my life is living it!”

  That’s what it’s all about—living and enjoying the world of TCKs. As parents help their children do that, they are building into their TCKs’ lives a solid sense of who they are as individuals, as TCKs, and giving them a deep sense of relational belonging, a connection to many geographical sites, and the freedom and courage to fully participate in life no matter where their feet land. It’s a good place to be.

  Lessons from the TCK Petri Dish

  Perhaps the application is simple: whatever our life circumstances, wherever we live, whatever opportunities we have, no matter our cultural interactions or not, “unpack your bags and plant your trees.” The specifics of how we do that may be different, but the principle is universal for those who want to live life fully and with as much joy as possible. Even CCKs who find themeselves away from home because of political unrest or other situations that force them to leave their homelands tell us that by living fully one day at a time they found blessings despite the tears. And this principle applies, even during re-entry—our next topic!

  CHAPTER 17

  Coming “Home”: Reentry

  Culture shock is a peculiar thing. It feels as if all your guideposts have been turned upside down, as though the words you read were unexpectedly printed backwards, as if the air you took for granted with every breath was suddenly scented in a strange and unfamiliar way. I looked around at the people I went to classes with: I looked like them; all of us wore jeans and T-shirts, we spoke the same language, though some of us had different accents. We had similar interests, similar callings. We were intelligent, we were young, we were finding our paths, defining our interests. Yet the very way the other students walked in the world, viewed their place in it, and approached others made me feel like a stranger, and there were times of intense longing for the familiarity of home.1

  —Nina Sichel, from Unrooted Childhoods:

  Memoirs of Growing Up Global

  AND NOW WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. After all these years of careful planning to make the most of their years in a host culture, to deal positively with the transitions along the way, to make good school choices, and to enjoy the journey among many worlds, the time has finally come for the family, or at least the TCKs themselves, to go “home.” As we said at the beginning of this book, one of the factors that distinguishes the TCK experience from a true immigrant is the full expectation that after living for a significant period of their developmental years outside their passport culture, there will come the day when TCKs make a permanent return to that country and culture. Oddly enough, for many TCKs this is one of the most difficult transitions they go through, no matter how many other moves they have already made. Commonly called reentry, for a great number of TCKs this process more closely resembles an entry.

  Why is reentry so hard for so many?

  Reentry Stresses

  Some reasons for reentry stress are simply extensions of the many factors we have already talked about, particularly the normal challenges of any cross-cultural transition: the grief of losing a world they have come to love, the discomfort of being out of cultural balance once more, and the struggle to start to find a place of belonging in a new place with new people. There are also some very particular and additional stresses TCKs face during this transition to their home culture, however, and they are worth examining carefully.

  UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

  Expectations of their “dream world.” In today’s world, most TCKs go back and forth between home and host cultures at fairly regular intervals. When they tell us they “know what it’s like” to live in that passport country because of that, they forget that going for vacation is different from living somewhere longer term. When TCKs return for a limited time, relatives plan special events and parents may indulge their children (and themselves) with various “goodies” they have missed overseas—a favorite ice cream flavor or a trip to Disneyland. It’s easy for TCKs to begin to think of all this attention and these kinds of privileges as normal for life in this country. When it turns out they have to settle in and no one is treating them any more special than anyone else, it can be a shock.

  Expectations of “sameness.” One of the most basic reasons for reentry stress relates to the unconscious expectations of both the TCKs and those in their home culture of how they will relate to one another. As we discussed in chapter 4, many TCKs have been recognized as foreigners while living in their host culture. Some have lived there as hidden immigrants, and a few fit into either the adopted or mirror category. When TCKs return to their passport culture, however, almost all are hidden immigrants. Now everything Gary Weaver talked about in his model of the iceberg and how that relates to cultural expectations and stress starts to make even more sense. People at home take one look at these returning TCKs and expect them to be in the “mirror” box illustrated in Figure 4-3—persons who think and look like themselves. Why wouldn’t they? After all, these TCKs are from the same racial, ethnic, and national background as those “at home” are.

  TCKs look around them and they, too, often expect to be in the mirror box. For years they’ve known they were “different” but excused it because they knew they were Asians living in England, Africans living in Germany, or Canadians living in Bolivia. That justification for being different is now gone, and they presume they will finally be the same as others; after all, these are their own people. Wrong. Take another look at Krista and Nicola, our look-alike TCKs who let their host culture peers in England and Scotland know how eager they were to return to their home countries where they knew they would finally fit in and belong.

  When Krista first returned to the United States, she felt euphoric at finally being “home.” It didn’t take long, however, before Krista realized to her horror that she couldn’t relate to her American classmates either. Somehow she was as different from them as from her English peers.

  The same thing happened to Nicola when she returned to England. After literally kissing the tarmac when she disembarked from the plane in London, a strange thing soon happened. Nicola found herself increasingly irritated with her English student peers. Their world seemed so small. Internally, she began resisting becoming like them, and within a year virtually all of her friends were international students and other TCKs. She wondered why she could never completely fit into the world around her, whether it was Scottish or English. Both Krista and Nicola’s disappointment was greater because they had always presumed if they could only make it “home,” they would no longer feel so different from others.

  Conversely, TCKs aren’t doing much better in their opinions of new-found peers. When TCKs saw themselves as true foreigners in Romania, they never expected their local friends to know where Alberta was on a Canadian map. Now they can’t believe how dumb their friends in Alberta are because they have no idea where Romania is.

  REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK

  How many TCKs have we met who assure us they will have no problem with reentry because they have, indeed, made trips back and forth every year with nary a h
itch? In fact, they tell us they love it and can’t wait to get back and settle in permanently. They have kept up on the latest fads and styles, and they know all the music friends are listening to. All will surely be well. When we try to talk about reverse culture shock—going through the same cycles of culture shock or stress many adults feel when going to a new country for the first time—most TCKs, and often their parents, assure us it will not be so. Again, the very fact that it isn’t expected can make it worse.

  Many TCKs have similar experiences to those of Krista and Nicola, where all seems well at the beginning of reentry. Relatives and old friends welcome the TCKs warmly, while the school bends over backward in its efforts to assess how transcripts from some exotic foreign school relate to the local curriculum. Soon, however, unexpected differences begin to pop up. Classmates use slang or idioms that mean nothing to the returning TCKs. Everyone else is driving a car; they only know how to ride a bike. If they do drive, they learned to drive on the other side of the road. They never had to pump their own gas when they could still call it petrol and others understood what they meant. Friends, relatives, and classmates are shocked at the TCKs’ ignorance at these most common practices necessary for everyday living. If they were true immigrants, no one would expect them to know all these things. But because they are presumed to be in the mirror box, those in the home country begin to peg them as “strange” or, at least, slightly stupid.