Reentry might not be quite so difficult if the unexpected differences were merely in some of these more obvious ways. But deeper levels of cultural dissonance lurk beneath the apparently similar surface. When friends ask a TCK whose parents worked in Uganda with the AIDS patients in refugee camps to join them at McDonald’s for a hamburger, all that the TCK can think about is how many people could eat for a whole day or week in Uganda for the amount of money this one meal cost. Even worse, he watches people throw out leftover food and can’t help expressing his shock and horror. The friends who took him out for lunch feel this TCK is ungrateful at best, condemning at worst.
And so the problems may continue to mount. TCKs who have grown up in a culture where there’s a commitment to honesty and respect accompanied by orderliness and quiet find entry into a confrontational, loud, self-centered home culture quite offensive. Those who’ve grown up in a boisterous, activity-centered, individualistic culture may find people from their own country docile and self-effacing. Often TCKs begin to realize they don’t even like what is considered their home culture. And those in the home culture may soon realize they’re not so sure they like the TCKs either. But no one stops to think through how these reactions are related to the cultural expectations they had for one another in the first place. They still presume their inside selves are supposed to match their outside selves in a way they would never expect with friends in another country or culture. Despite expectations to the contrary, never forget that reentry is, in fact, reverse culture shock. Soon the fun stage is gone and the fight and flight stages appear.
Common Reactions to Reentry Stress
We have looked before at the three common styles of behavior TCKs often use when changing cultural worlds: adapting as a chameleon and basically trying to hide the difference, becoming a screamer and making sure to define the difference, or retreating as a wallflower to hope others don’t notice the difference. Most TCKs we know pick up at least one of these personas during reentry and that is okay. It’s normal and gives them an opportunity in different ways to assess the situation and decide what choices they will make for longer term responses. But in the process of reentry, we have also seen some other behaviors that are understandable but perhaps not so necessary if we can help TCKs find better ways to cope. Here are some common ones.
ELEVATED FEARS
Fear of being disloyal to the past. For some TCKs, it seems they unconsciously fear that allowing themselves to repatriate totally would mean being disloyal to their host country. “If I allow myself to like it here, it may mean I really didn’t like it there,” or “If I adjust and fit in, I may lose my memory of and commitment to return to that place where I grew up.” Such fears can make them lose the delight in their present, which is as much a part of their life experience as their past has been. They haven’t yet learned to live in the great paradox of the both/and-edness of their worlds.
Fear of losing their identity. When the foundation of the cultural ground beneath them is badly shaking, even those who thought they had a clear sense of personal identity may begin to shake with it. At that point, all they may feel they have left is this memory of who they were, the life they had before, and that there was once a place they felt as true “home.” “If I let go of the place and the people where I have always identified most and fit in best to align myself with my home country and culture, will I lose some important part of me?” This can be a hard time for parents, who can easily feel their children are rejecting what is a precious part of the parents’ identity—being a member of this community or nation.
EXCESSIVE ANGER AT “HOME” CULTURE AND PEERS
At times, it seems TCKs can be culturally tolerant anywhere but in their own culture. When people move to a new host culture, they usually keep quiet if they have strongly negative opinions about that culture. At most, they only express them to fellow expatriates. These rules seem to change, however, on reentry. Some TCKs appear to feel quite free to express every negative opinion they can possibly think of about their home culture, no matter who is around. While chronic put-downs may be an unconscious defense for the TCKs’ own feelings of insecurity or rejection, such remarks further alienate them from everyone around them. But, like it or not, they are a member of this group by birth and citizenship. In affirming one part of their experience and themselves, they reject another.
A SENSE OF ELITISM—TRUE OR PROJECTED
We talked of this in general before, but reentry is a key time to think about TCKs becoming disdainful of those who do not share their experience. This is a troubling behavior we often see at this time and can carry on for years. While understandable, it goes against all we would consider to be the gifts of this upbringing. The idea in our definition that TCKs relate on experiential lines rather than traditional lines seems to turn into the reality that “I can only relate to other TCKs.” Perhaps this is a subtle way of screaming, “I’m not like you so don’t expect me to be,” but it can lead to a certain type of at least projected arrogance that further isolates the TCKs from many rich friendships they might otherwise have.
Another form this may take is when TCKs feel so upset that no one wants to know their story but forget that perhaps they have not stopped to ask those at home more about their own stories either. In some discussions, it seems TCKs almost assume no one who didn’t live overseas even has a story to share.
DEPRESSION
While we mentioned that the “wallflower” response of withdrawing to assess the scene is certainly a common response during reentry, we also want to say that at times these behaviors can reveal or, ironically, mask depression. Common withdrawal patterns that can initially be within normal and then move toward true depression might include TCKs having a hard time getting out of bed, or sitting in their rooms and watching TV all day rather than joining any activities at school or church. Withdrawal can have less obvious forms, however. Some students retreat into their studies and earn straight As—and who can fault them for that? Others spend hours practicing their favorite instrument and winning every musical contest they enter. While everyone congratulates them for their honors, no one realizes this is another form of escape or even depression.
While these behaviors—including anger or depression—may be an initial coping mechanism, if any continue for six months to a year in an unremitting form, getting some outside help may be needed. The sad thing is for a few TCKs, when they find out that even at “home” they don’t fit, the depression can become a serious and a life-threatening issue at times. Psychiatrist Esther Schubert, an ATCK herself, has done research among TCKs and reports that suicide rates go up among TCKs after their first year home when it seems they give up hoping they will ever fit in.2 For them, it’s the ongoing struggle to fit in that leads to despair rather than simply the initial reentry. This, of course, is not the common pattern, but one of which to be aware. If TCKs or ATCKs are reading this and feeling this despair even now, please seek some help from trusted friends or counselors.
Helping in the Reentry Process
While there are no foolproof ways to ensure a perfect reentry, it’s an important time and everyone involved should pay attention to it, whether you are the TCK,ATCK, parents, relative, school personnel, or friend. How TCKs do or don’t cope with the reentry experience can shape their lives for years to come. The basic key for all concerned is to first understand what the normal process is about. Normalizing this part of the TCK experience is as important as it is for so many other facets. Barbara Schaetti, an American/Swiss ATCK who did her Ph.D. Dissertation on identity development among TCKs/global nomads, offers this advice.
Introduce your children from their earliest years abroad to the terms “global nomad” and “third culture kid.” They may not be interested at the time, but when they start searching for how to make meaning of their internationally mobile lives, they’ll know there’s this particularly relevant subject that people have written and spoken about.3
It’s also helpful to approach the
reentry process by talking with others who have already been through it, attending seminars, and reading the growing number of books available for third culture families, including Homeward Bound by Robin Pascoe4 and The Art of Coming Home by Craig Storti.5 Having said that, here are some practical steps to help TCKs get through this process in a healthy rather than a harmful way.
Prepare for reentry before leaving the host country. Rosalea Cameron, an Australian ATCK, did her dissertation research on TCKs and writes in great detail about the impact of mobility on relationships and identity development within that context. She also looked for factors that contributed to developing leadership skills among TCKs, and she discovered a major positive link between TCKs who had managed to keep a sense of continuity between the different phases of their lives and those who developed into leaders.6 Hopefully, before the family leaves the overseas experience, each member has built a strong RAFT (chapter 14) and made concrete plans to keep the thread of connection going between where they’ve been and where they will be. This is vital for making a smoother way in during reentry, as TCKs can affirm the both/and-edness of their lives when they realize they can maintain connections with the past as well as make new friends in the present.
Remind TCKs that the foundation stones of their lives can never be taken away. When TCKs fear losing the past by moving on to the future, remind them that a building set on a firm foundation doesn’t lose that foundation when it gets bigger. No one can ever take away their experiences or depth of understanding or breadth of how they see the world. Others around may not always recognize these foundational stones, for some may lie deep where they are not instantly visible, but they are there. The fact that others don’t yet see them can never remove one brick.
Remind TCKs that foundations are meant to be built on. While no one can take away any foundation stone, foundations without a building on top aren’t very functional. Placing new bricks, perhaps of some different colors and textures, makes the whole building stronger, more useful, and beautiful, but they don’t replace the foundation. To move ahead in life and grow in and into each phase is never a negation of the past, but rather an affirmation of how solid that past has been—solid enough to support a lifetime of building an ever-growing edifice on it.
Remind everyone this is the time a mentor can be helpful. Since reentry is actually the entering stage of the larger transition experience they are going through at this point, don’t forget this is when TCKs most need a good mentor, as discussed in chapter 14. Reentry is the key period when TCKs are most vulnerable to being swept up in a group of friends they would never have chosen under normal circumstances, and they can get into drugs, alcohol, or other behavior they previously would have spurned. A good mentor can be a positive role model and lead them in the other direction too.
Parents must remember it’s okay when their children don’t share the same sense of national identity as they do. This may seem like a small point, but this can be a source of great stress in a family if the TCKs are rejecting, at least for a while, identifying with the home country. Parents need to remember once more that when they decided to move to another culture, they also realized (or should have!) that their children would likely wind up with a broader sense of cultural or ethnic identity than they might have. Again, it’s helpful if parents can understand this is an expansion rather than an exclusion of their worlds.
Parents must remember that they have the ultimate responsibility for helping the children through reentry. This is such a basic fact that it almost seems silly to say, but, believe it or not, we’ve seen TCKs arrive at universities with no clear idea of where they will go for long weekends, during school breaks, or even during summer vacations. It seems as if parents have shipped them back home while they remain in another country in the rather vague, blissful assumption that everything will work out by itself—perhaps relying on other relatives to take care of their children, even when those relationships have never been nurtured.
It’s not enough to presume that relatives at home will automatically pitch in to take care of a “homeless” TCK. We can’t state this point strongly enough. Any time parents send their children back home (and also to a different country altogether for university as sometimes happens) while they themselves remain overseas, parents are still responsible for making sure their children are protected and cared for. It’s their absolute responsibility to make sure their children have a designated “home-away-from-home.”
Remember it’s okay for families to customize their approach to reentry depending on their circumstances. One family’s story shows how creative some parents can be to fulfill both their parental roles, keep their children ready throughout their expatriate journey to repatriate at some point, and still accomplish their career assignment as well. We mentioned Ria’s attempts to help her children stay conversant in their mother tongue of Flemish in our chapter on education. Here’s the rest of their story.
All through their years living abroad, Ria continued to help her children learn Flemish. When it came time for university, the two older kids chose to return to Belgium and enter university with others who had been raised in Belgium. But the Verrijssens soon realized they had to make some radical decisions to help their children adjust to their passport country.
The Verrijssens bought an apartment near the university in Belgium so the siblings could stay there together, and they decided that Ria would travel back to see them every six weeks. This frequent traveling, along with erik taking side trips to them whenever his business travel took him into the region, meant the kids got the right support in addition to all the other support they enjoyed from Ria’s and Erik’s family and friends in Belgium.
While this obviously cost the family much in terms of both money and time, it made this transition back easier for their children. After one year, both of the Verrijssens who were in university felt settled in their “new” world. The parents had made some radical decisions and found creative ways to address the reentry issues their kids faced. Because they can relate to their passport culture in this deep way, it can now be their choice whether they stay in Belgium or return to some international career.
Of course, not everyone can do this. However, a strong extended family can help the process greatly, especially if both the relatives and the TCKs already feel comfortable and at home with one another. If it’s possible for TCKs to attend college near their relatives, this can help ease them through reentry.
If no extended family is available, close friends can help. But if there is no safe harbor available for their TCK, parents should think seriously about staying home themselves until their child is secure in his or her new life. This may cost the parents of such TCKs a few years of their careers, but failure to do so may cause their children lifelong harm because of mistakes these TCKs make or the abandonment they feel as they try to adjust to a world they have never known.
Remember a “ journey of clarification” later on can be helpful. Ultimately, one of the best things to help TCKs resettle in their home country on a long-term basis is to provide an opportunity for them to revisit the host country where they feel most deeply rooted. It’s easy for that past experience to become so idealized or romanticized in the transition to their home culture that it grows to larger-than-life proportions. Going back can help put it into perspective. Going back does something else as well. It connects the past and present worlds of TCKs and reminds them that their past is not a myth of their imagination or totally inaccessible. In addition, such a journey reminds them that things never stay the same, and to see in ever clearer light that ultimately the past is now their foundation for the future.
How Reentry Becomes a Plus
While this discussion of what happens during reentry and what we can do about it are hopefully helpful, we want to conclude this chapter with a basic concept we believe can help TCKs and ATCKs understand a bit more about their overall story and assist in reentry as well.
We’ve talked a lot in this book a
bout personal and cultural identity. We expanded the cultural iceberg in chapter 11 to show how basic human identity precedes culture, ethnicity, or race, for these are the attributes all humans share at the Moment of birth. When, however, our friend Barb Knuckles first saw the expanded iceberg (Figure 11-1), she said, “If you leave the list of what it means to be a person at the bottom of the iceberg, you still can’t see the real person because you still have to go through all the differences looking for that person. But if you flip your iceberg, you will see the person first. Once you see this fundamental likeness all people share, it’s safer to explore who the other person is in the deeper layers of culture as well because you have a place underneath that is still there.”
So what’s so special about that? The irony is we have really come full circle. TCKs have unwittingly been flipping the cultural iceberg for years! Look at Figure 17-1.
Figure 17-1 The Flipped Iceberg
(© 2006 Barbara H. Knuckles/Ruth E. Van Reken)
Think about it. Of the countless TCKs we’ve asked, “What is the greatest gift of your experience?” most will say, “Having the opportunity to meet people of many cultures and getting to know them.” While the world is trying to figure out what to do with “diversity” based on traditional models that are primarily defined by many of the externals of the cultural iceberg, most TCKs have lived a life where, indeed, they saw the person first and the details of race, culture, or economics second, third, or not particularly at all. Why is it that the same person who sat around a village fire in Papua one day with a tribal friend can fly to a resort in Bali the next day to meet another friend who works for the World Bank? How is it Barack Obama can live in the White House and be equally comfortable with the friends he met as a community organizer in Chicago?
Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds Page 30