To that we would respond with a “yes, but” answer. Yes, what the parents desire for their children is valuable, but ATCKs who suffered within a religious system must first sort out their pain in terms of who God actually is compared to the rules and culture of the religious system that seeks to represent God. Until then, preaching, or worse, words of spiritual reprimand, will only fuel the anger. A lecture on what a great country this is and why they should be grateful to be part of it may all be true, but not helpful for a military ATCK trying to understand the many nuances of his or her story. All ATCKs need, at some point, to differentiate between what parts of their experience are basically “normal” for being a TCK and what parts are particular to their family structure or the organization under which the parents worked.
Is there never a time for third culture parents to talk forthrightly with their ATCKs both in response to the accusations that are being made as well as the destructive behavior parents see? Of course there is. When parents have listened and understood what their adult child is feeling, there is an appropriate time to express their own feelings and beliefs. But it must come as a sharing of who they are and their perspectives rather than as a denial of what the ATCK has shared or is feeling.
FORGIVE
Sometimes parents need to ask their ATCKs for forgiveness. They have made mistakes too and shouldn’t run from acknowledging them. If their ATCK has been extremely hurtful and rebellious toward them, parents will also have much to forgive. This can be very difficult, particularly if their adult child is not yet acknowledging how badly he or she has hurt them. But if parents are able to forgive and ask for forgiveness, it can be a major factor in their adult child’s healing process.
ASSUME YOU ARE NEEDED
Parents should assume their adult children still need and want them as part of their lives.
They may tell parents not to bother coming for a birth, graduation, or wedding, saying “It isn’t that big a deal,” and these ATCKs probably believe that’s how they really feel. But it makes a big difference—even to those who don’t think they need their parents any longer—when parents make the effort to remain involved in a caring way in their children’s lives as adults. Sometimes those years together as adults finally make up for the separations of the past.
What friends and Other Relatives Can Do
Sometimes friends and other relatives can help ATCKs take the first major step in the healing process because they stand outside the emotionally reactive space occupied by the ATCKs and their parents. What can they do for the ATCKs they love to help in the healing process?
LISTEN TO THE STORY AND ASK GOOD QUESTIONS
Many ATCKs feel their childhood story is so far removed from their present lives that they have nearly forgotten it themselves. Few people cared to know more than the cursory details when they first returned from their third culture experience, and they quit talking about it long ago. To have someone invite them for lunch, ask to hear about their experiences, and then actually listen may be such a shock to some that they seem to at least temporarily forget everything that has happened to them. But persist. When friends or relatives initiate the conversation and clearly express their interest, the ATCK knows it’s bona fide. It may even give them the first chance they’ve ever had to put words to their experiences.
Questions such as these can also help the process: “How did you feel when you said good-bye to your grandma?” “What was the hardest thing about returning to your home country?” “What did you like best about growing up that way?”
These kinds of questions prove the friend is listening closely enough to hear the behind-the-scenes story and may even challenge ATCKs to consider issues they never stopped to think about before.
DON’T COMPARE STORIES
Friends and relatives shouldn’t point out how many other people have had it worse. Generally, ATCKs already know they’ve had a wonderful life compared to many others. That has often been part of their problem in trying to understand their struggles.
Most ATCKs will first relate the positive parts of their story. They won’t tell the difficult aspects until they feel safe and comfortable with the listener. Once they do begin to share the darker times, don’t try to cheer them up by reminding them of the positives. Both sides of the story are valid.
COMFORT IF POSSIBLE
Sometimes friends are the first to ever comfort an ATCK. There are ATCKs with amazing stories of pain who came through an uncontrollable situation such as a political evacuation under heavy gunfire, or simply an insensitive remark that has cut them deeply all their lives. For ATCKs who went through political stress and resulting physical danger in days gone by, few had any debriefing teams. People celebrated their survival but never addressed the trauma. That unthinking remark may not be known by others, but it forever seals them inside to that place of “I’m too stupid to figure out what’s happening.” When a situation like that comes out, it’s helpful for the listener to take a Moment and say, “That must have been incredibly scary,” or “I am so sorry that happened to you. If you were ten years old, that would have felt terrible.” The ATCKs may reveal terrible things that have been locked up as their secrets throughout life, once someone begins to truly listen. If you feel overwhelmed by the story they tell, you can still find ways to acknowledge their loss or grief even as you realize they might need to discuss the events and feelings with a professional counselor at some point.
One point to bear in mind is that, initially, comfort can sometimes be hard for the ATCK to accept. Many feel as if admitting to any pain is the same as disowning their parents, their faith, or the organizational system in which they grew up. Sometimes ATCKs become angry when others try to comfort them, because they refuse to admit they might need it. So offer comfort, but don’t push if they aren’t ready to receive it.
How Therapists Can Help
We don’t presume to tell therapists how to counsel ATCKs, since professional therapy is outside our domain. We hope, however, that we can help therapists understand the problems specific to the TCK experience, such as where TCK grief often comes from, where the early attachments between parents and children might have been broken, and how TCKs’ concepts of identity and worldview have been affected by cultural and mobility issues. Our goal is to help therapists understand the basic life patterns of the third culture experience so they will be better prepared to assist their TCK clients. Hopefully, a careful reading of this book by therapists will have done that. An interesting occurrence when we have given seminars for therapists is that after our presentations, our audience begins to redefine the topic by explaining it back to us and one another from therapeutic models such as attachment theory, triangulation, or post-traumatic stress syndrome with which they are already familiar.
After attending a conference on TCK issues, one therapist said, “We used to think that if a child was adopted at birth, that child would have no different issues to deal with than a child born to the adoptive couple. Now we know anytime a client comes in who was adopted, there are certain questions to ask.
“It seems to me the TCK issue falls in that category. Being aware of this experience can help us ask better questions when we realize our clients are TCKs or ATCKs.”
RECOGNIZE HIDDEN LOSSES
Therapists who understand the nature of the third culture experience may be the first to help ATCKs identify the hidden losses that are part of the TCK experience, but that TCKs themselves are often not aware of. The Cycles of Mobility chart (see Figure 19-1) can be a useful tool in this process. Many ATCKs do not recognize the degree to which separation has been an integral part of their lives and how it has contributed to feelings of loss and grief.
Instructions: Make a time chart of the separation patterns for the first eighteen years of the ATCK’s life, using different colors to fill in the spaces for when and where he or she lived. For example:
Blue = time living with parents in the home country
Green = time living with par
ents in the host country #1
Purple = time living with parents in the host country #2
Yellow = time living with parents in the host country #3
Brown = time spent away from parents in boarding school in the host country
Pink = time spent away from parents in boarding school in the home country
Orange = time living with anyone other than parents or boarding school
This chart can be modified to fit the specific situation of each ATCK. What’s important is for the therapist—and the ATCK—to see the overall patterns of mobility: where the transitions between various cultures happened, what ages they occurred, and so forth. As the times of transition, separation, and loss become obvious, therapists may discover the roots of some of the issues they see in their ATCK clients. This insight can help them aid their ATCK clients in recognizing the areas that need healing.
Therapists should also help their ATCK clients carefully think through the issues regarding the impact of culture on a TCK’s developmental process. Some of the feelings ATCKs struggle with may, in fact, be largely a result of cultural imbalance.
Figure 19-1 The Cycles of Mobility Chart (© Lois M. Bushong)
RECOGNIZE THE IMPACT OF THE SYSTEM
One major factor that many therapists of ATCKs overlook or fail to understand is the powerful influence of the military, mission, business, or other organizational system under which these ATCKs grew up. Often the ATCKs’ anger or hurt stems directly from policies that either controlled their lives on a daily basis or took away choice when it came to schooling, moving, and so on. On the flip side, ATCKs who were used to being protected or nurtured in that system (for example, the perks like free medical care or inexpensive housing) may not know how to cope comfortably in a larger, less structured world where they are expected to depend more on themselves. Therapy is sometimes stymied if issues are dealt with only in the context of family relationships rather than understanding the operative system that often superseded family decisions.
RECOGNIZE THE PARADOX
Often ATCKs are defensive in therapy when asked about the painful parts of their past. They don’t want to negate the way of life that is the only one they have known and is a core element in their identity. Corporate kids may feel they are discrediting the many privileges they have known if they say there was anything hard about the experience. Missionary kids may have trouble acknowledging the pain because they feel that to do so will negate their faith. It is hard for many to know how much of that system they can examine, and potentially give up, without renouncing what they value in the process.
Acknowledging the paradoxical nature of their experience may be particularly important in relationship to a client who attended a boarding school. These ATCKs may have so many great memories of the camaraderie experienced there and friendships made and maintained through the years. How could there be any negatives? In addition, for some TCKs who were boarding students for as long as twelve years, their identity is deeply tied into the boarding school experience. To acknowledge anything but the good would threaten their entire sense of self. But young boarding students feel unprotected; a six-year-old child going to boarding school may actually experience something akin to becoming an orphan. How can ATCKs acknowledge the loneliness they felt without seeing it as a denial of the good they have also known at school? For these, or any ATCKs who grew up in strong systems and feel closely identified to that system, questioning system policies can be such a threat to their core identity that they may refuse to continue with the therapy they need.
That is why those working with ATCKs must never forget to recognize— and help the ATCKs recognize—what we have tried to stress time and again. Looking at the TCK experience from the perspective of the adult TCK will reveal many paradoxical realities. Therapists must affirm the positive elements as well as identify the stress points to give their ATCK clients the permission they need to look at all sides of their past experiences. It’s also helpful to remind them once more that if there hadn’t been so much good to lose, there often wouldn’t have been so much grief at its passing.
Lessons from the TCK Petri Dish
Looking at the impact of childhood experiences on our adult lives is an important part of each person’s journey in moving to a fuller understanding of who we are, ATCK or not. But when we meet CCKs from the other types of cross-cultural experiences we mentioned in chapter 3, we see that many face the same types of specific issues mentioned here. Certainly their own hidden diversity—that place has been shaped by their various cultural worlds—remains unseen by others who judge them based on old models of culture and ethnicity. Even more frequently, we see that there may be other types of unrecognized losses stemming from the specific nature of their cross-cultural upbringing. One bi-racial ACCK said she realized she never had a mirror for understanding who she was because she didn’t look like her mother or father. ACCKs who were raised in refugee camps feel they lost the wonder and innocence of childhood. Domestic ACCKs never realized they, too, lost a sense of cultural balance when moving from one place to another. Without language and understanding, these ACCKs also had no way to process what they were experiencing. For all parents and therapists of ACCKs, realizing the way they themselves may have grown up in more monocultural environments and how this is different from how their ACCKs have been raised means that the same lessons we list above regarding careful listening are critical. We are indeed facing a “new normal” in this world. The more we all understand the changes taking place, the better we can move ahead with confidence and hope, not with fear or rejection.
Where Do We Go from Here?
In the years since the first edition of Third Culture Kids, we’ve been encouraged to see the end of apathy and the beginning of real awareness that there are some valid issues to deal with in this particular lifestyle of children growing up among many cultural worlds. Sponsoring agencies are developing new strategies for taking better care of their families. Schools throughout the world are making changes in curriculum and approaches to teaching that will make it easier for students from any country to fit back into the school system of their home country. Parents are making careful, thoughtful decisions that take into account their own TCKs’ needs. Everywhere we see ATCKs taking ownership of their past so that they may use it well.
But we also concluded our first edition saying that we hoped this book would be a beginning for all of us to consider what some of the ramifications of globalization might be for children everywhere. We are encouraged to see that vision growing as well. And this phase has just begun. We believe various disciplines such as developmental psychology, sociology, counseling, and education need to begin a comprehensive, multidisciplinary dialogue on how global changes are challenging traditional models in each discipline by studying patterns of development or identity based on those who grew up primarily in the more monocultural communities of the past. We believe those who have grown up as CCKs of all backgrounds can contribute enormously to the discussion.
And so we have now reached both an ending and a beginning with this edition: the end of sharing what we have already learned from and about TCKs and ATCKs, and the beginning of watching the rest of this story unfold—wherever it grows. But, after all is said and done, we repeat what we said in our first edition: it’s a great gift to grow up among many cultural worlds. It’s been wonderful to know, love, and work with so many who have had this experience. Without all who have shared their lives and stories with us, this book could never have been written. We are grateful indeed. And we wish each of you, our readers, much joy in your own journeys as well.
Let the conversations begin!
Epilogue
By Ruth E. Van Reken
WHEN I HEARD THE SAD NEWS of David Pollock’s impending death in April 2004, I felt as though I was just about to lose half of my brain. For so many, the size of Dave’s heart is what they remember most. Time and again at his memorial service, individuals spoke of how, when they met him
, Dave’s undivided attention made them feel as if they were the most important person in the world. And at that Moment, they were.
I, too, have no question of the size of Dave’s heart. When I sent him the journaling I did at age 39 trying to figure out my own journey, not only did Dave respond, but he worked out a way for me to attend the first conference on these topics in Manila and encouraged me to publish my writings in what became Letters Never Sent. But what I also came to value beyond measure was the size of Dave’s mind.
Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds Page 34