An international lifestyle involves a balancing act between gains and losses. While Third Culture Kids reap the benefits of expat life — including exotic travel, linguistic competence, and cultural adaptability — these global nomads are also confronted with problems that are unique to the TCK experience.
TCKs ask “where do I belong?”
Immersion in multiple cultures throughout childhood fosters superb cross-cultural skills and an ability to effortlessly adjust to new situations. Unfortunately for some TCKs, these useful traits are acquired at the cost of getting to know their home culture — and in some cases, their native language. This cultural void becomes a problem when TCKs return to their passport country for home leave, and especially when they repatriate. In fact, one of the biggest problems facing TCKs is their nagging sense of rootlessness.
In the book Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds (which you should read immediately if you haven’t already done so), David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken write that “home connotes an emotional place — somewhere you truly belong.” Fifteen-year-old Bilal, a Pakistani TCK who has spent half his life in Dubai and Canada, couldn’t agree more. “It doesn’t matter where you’re living,” he told me. “If you’re with your family, you can call it home.”
Third Culture Kids wonder “who am I?”
The sensation of dread many TCKs experience when asked “where are you from?” stems from their impression that they’re growing up between cultures. While they do feel intensely connected to their host countries, they don’t necessarily feel they belong completely to any single culture.
The flip side of their amazing adaptability, according to Pollock and Van Reken, is their inability to switch off their cultural radar: consciously or not, they’re always checking to make sure their behaviour is culturally appropriate. “In the end,” write the authors, “TCKs may adopt so many personas as cultural chameleons that they don’t know who they really are.”
Searching for a place in the universe is part of the human condition. This particular crisis of identity, however, is especially widespread among Third Culture Kids and Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs). Erin, a 16-year-old Canadian who has lived in Europe and Asia, feels this keenly. “Every time you leave somewhere, you say goodbye to the person you could’ve been,” she explains. “No one knows every part of me, because I show a different side in every place I’ve lived.”
Not only are TCKs confused by what Van Reken and Pollock call “the value dissonances that occur in the cross-cultural experience,” but they’re often forced to deal with conflicting values within their own families. With their seemingly infinite capacity for adjusting to novel environments, children far outpace their parents when it comes to cultural integration.
Bilal’s experience with the clash of generations is familiar to many TCKs: “You move to this country and it’s completely different from the last place [you lived in]. You want to fit in, but as you adapt, your parents have trouble understanding you, because you’ve changed. So the closer you get to your friends, the further you move away from your parents.”
TCKs may have trouble making plans
It’s not unusual for TCKs to feel that their lives are beyond their control. “You’re left feeling utterly powerless about the direction your life is taking,” says Erin. The unpredictability and instability of expatriate life cause many Third Culture Kids to stop looking forward to upcoming events because the announcement of the next move may well upset all their plans. “I do find it hard to make lasting commitments,” Erin confesses. “Every plan I make for the future feels like a promise I’m going to break.”
Unresolved grief is common when TCKs move on
Leaving friends behind is never easy, even in a world where technology and social networking make staying in touch as simple as pointing and clicking. Leaving a beloved place is similarly wrenching. Yet grieving TCKs aren’t necessarily encouraged to express their sorrow. In the chaotic atmosphere of an international move, it may seem there isn’t time to properly deal with children’s emotions. Once in the new country, the process of acculturation takes up all available energy, and the heartache is once again pushed aside.
Children — even those as aware and communicative as TCKs — aren’t always able to articulate their grief. Sometimes they choose to suffer in silence because they recognize their parents are preoccupied with their own issues regarding the move. But often Third Culture Kids simply don’t grasp the fullness of their loss. It might be hard for children to understand that what they’re mourning is the unfulfilled potential of a life that’s no longer theirs.
Relocating every couple of years requires constantly dismantling and rebuilding entire lives. Yes, it sometimes sucks, and few TCKs emerge completely unscathed from the experience. But I’m more convinced than ever that their unique set of skills can make them leaders in our increasingly globalized world.
This is hitting a chord today. I’m a TCK/ATCK who just hit 20 years total overseas child and adult – more if you include the years my folks (and home) were in four more countries after I left for uni. I have never lived in one place more than seven years. We have been in AU four years and were just told we are repatriating. I am thrilled because I long to get back to the same continent as my family but expressed to a friend last night that I feel like this hearty desire to ‘go home’ is somehow like losing my expat cred! I’m suddenly no better than that poor whiny woman we’ve all met who never adjusted and couldn’t wait to get back!
I’d never have believed that one day I’d prefer to go to Houston TX than head off on a new adventure. Friends are incredulous that I’m happy to give up the travel, money, lifestyle but after years of the highs and lows of expat life, I want to be where I know the rules, don’t stand out for my looks or language, and can fade in to quiet, easy, normal anonymity! Truly feel that this is rooted in being a TCK. I’ve had enough. I envy the 20 years that friends have had in one place. I’m jealous of people who don’t hesitate when asked where they are from!
I’m sure someone will be along to retrieve my official Battle Hardened Expat card directly
Some expats become lifers, while others throw in the towel at some point. I’ve often wondered how people decide that enough is enough. I think 20 years is impressive, and I can understand your longing for something more stable. But maybe that’s because I’ve never been a TCK. It will be interesting to see how you feel after several years back home!
Right now my main thought is “Yay! No more international long haul flights or being frisked in the Moscow airport in transit!”
As an aside – when my Dad retired after his decades as an international exec he was counting down how many flights he had to take for a year. As in “only 52 more trips and I’m retired”. When he got to the US the first thing he did was get his pilots license and buy a plane. I think he successfully met his goal to never get on a commercial flight again.
He’s nearly 85 now and tells me he feels they stayed gone too long. The US was a foreign assignment by the time they got back and he never really felt ‘settled’ again. I’m sure their experience is coloring my perception as well. I really want to feel settled.
This is SO spot-on, Maria! It’s like you are writing about me and my kids specifically, but of course we are all in the same boat. Having just moved, everything is so vivid in my mind. I have four kids, and two of them cried and cried as we left, while the other two seemed to take it all in stride. And yet it is those two I worry about more than the first set. They (the ones who cried so much) already have several new best friends, after just a week. I chuckled as I had to give 6 boys a ride to rugby practice. The notion that my 8th grader already is friends with 5 boys was just hilarious to me. Doesn’t that illustrate the downsides and upsides of TCKs beautifully?
Incidentally, I just asked him yesterday what he tells other kids who ask where he is from. I was just curious. He says he just answers with the last place he’s been, in this case South Africa. It’s easier that way, he says. Although usually that doesn’t stop the questioning. Then they want to know why he’s not black. Then they want to know where he was born (Asia). Then they want to know why he has an American accent. But not quite an American accent either.
I loved the part in your article about wanting to fit in and becoming chameleons. You would think it’s the opposite. You would think kids who’ve been all over realize the benefit of cultural differences and that it’s okay to be different. But it’s like almost the opposite occurs. You’re desperate to fit in, and can change so easily that you sometimes don’t know who you really are anymore. I feel that way as an adult, so I can’t imagine how that must be for kids who are much less self-confident.
Finally, I loved Erin’s comment of “Every time you leave somewhere, you say goodbye to the person you could’ve been.” What poetic language, and how true. I think I know whose kid she is:-)
I’ve GOT to read that book! But where to find the time with all this moving?
Ok, I’m done now, sorry for the ramble. I should have written my own blog post…
Epic comment, Sine! I know all of it will make its way into a blog post once things settle down. I think the need to fit in comes from two places: first, we’re talking about teenagers here. They want to be unique, but not too unique. Second, and more to the point, a lot of kids think TCKs are bragging when they talk about their lives. Can you imagine the reaction your son would get if he dropped “that time I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro” into casual conversation? The first time it would be “wow, cool!” and then if he ever mentioned it again they’d think he was stuck up.
Interesting comment about Erin. I’ve known her for oh, about 19 years now, and even I was surprised with her insights in this interview (most of which didn’t make it into the article due to space constraints.) I asked her afterwards if this was something she thought about a lot and she said “oh yeah.” TCKS, eh?
Now go unpack another box and get yourself settled.
Very good point about the bragging, that hadn’t occurred to me. But of course it’s true. I even remember that from being an exchange student. You realize how foreign and alien you sound when you really try to explain what it’s like elsewhere, so you tone it down and stick to what you have in common with everyone else. It’s bad enough you stick out, the last thing you want is to be labeled as a bragger. I absolutely HATED when they told me to “say something in German.”
I hate it when they tell me to say “eh” or “about.”
Great post – I linked it to a post from last week that I had a fellow TCK friend write for me. It touches on the “bragging’ piece. http://communicatingacrossboundariesblog.com/2013/02/19/the-arrogance-of-the-third-culture-kid-part-one-in-a-two-part-post/ I love her analysis in part one: “One side of the story is arrogance. The other side is pain and fear.”
What a powerful post. Thank you, Marilyn. I’ve tweeted it because everyone — TCK or not — should read it.
This is a late thank you….but thank you! So glad you passed it on.
I’ve been reading through various posts on your blog on this rainy Sunday morning and I’ve enjoyed them all. I’m not an ExPat…yet. I’m retired military, and that’s pretty close. I moved my kids all over the US, and they experienced many of the things you mentioned in this post without ever having to move abroad. The one thing that used to crack me up when they were younger was, whenever someone asked them where they were from they always replied with pride, “The Airport.” That was their way of saying “Air Force” and when asked today where they come from they still answer that they come from “The Air Force.”
That’s adorable! I know lots of people who would probably answer the question “where do you live?” with “the airport.” Thanks so much for spending your rainy day with me.