If your child is a Third Culture Kid (TCK) they will have spent a significant part of their developmental years outside your culture.
They build relationships to all the cultures, while not having full ownership in any, although elements from each culture are assimilated. This can result in cultural identity confusion and a discomfort with settling in any one place for too long.
It is important to bear in mind that most TCKs benefit enormously from their childhood experience and are more likely (than non TCKs) to demonstrate the following:
• Multiple language skills
• A high degree of maturity and independence,
• Intercultural sensitivity,
• Expanded worldviews,
• Open-mindedness
• Cultural empathy
• 4 times more likely to have bachelor’s degrees compared to non-TCKs
• Highly adaptive
• Able to cross cultures with ease
• More empathetic
• Better communication skills
• Emotional intelligence
However, your child is faced with challenges such as:
• Sense of belonging
• Difficulty with commitment as friends, schools, and homes constantly change
• Crisis of identity or uncertainty of cultural identity
• Loss of relationships and community
• Feeling different from others
• A feeling that they have no control
• Unresolved grief
Who am I? This is a question asked by many Third Culture Kids. They have birth citizenship in one country but are growing up in one or many different countries. This leaves them with the feeling of not belonging to any single culture or place, as they are perceived as foreigners in the countries they are growing up in. Although searching for a place in the universe is part of the human condition, TCKs often develop an identity that is rooted in people rather than places.
Potential problems are more likely to emerge around the ages of nine or 10, when friendships become more central to your child’s identity, and especially during teenage years. Children can become withdrawn, isolating themselves from their classmates, or become angry, lashing out at those around them.
Information about Online Counselling
Benefits and limitations of Online Counselling
Stages of Culture Shock
25 Signs You have a Third Culture Kid
• “Where are you from?” has more than one reasonable answer.
• They flew before they could walk.
• They speak two languages but can’t spell in either.
• They feel odd being in the ethnic majority.
• They have three passports.
• They go into culture shock upon returning to their “home” country.
• Their life story uses the phrase “Then we moved to…” three (or four, or five…) times.
• They wince when people mispronounce foreign words.
• The best word for something is the word they learned first, regardless of the language.
• They think VISA is a document that’s stamped in your passport, not a plastic card they carry in their wallet.
• They own personal appliances with 3 types of plugs, know the difference between 110 and 220 volts, 50 and 60 cycle current, and realize that a transformer isn’t always enough to make their appliances work.
• Half of their phone calls are unintelligible to those around them.
• They cruise the Internet looking for fonts that can support foreign alphabets.
• They miss the subtitles when they see the latest movie.
• They’ve gotten out of school because of monsoons, bomb threats, and/or popular demonstrations.
• They speak with authority on the subject of airline travel.
• They have frequent flyer accounts on multiple airlines.
• They know how to pack.
• The thought of sending their (hypothetical) kids to public school scares them, while the thought of letting them fly alone doesn’t at all.
• Their circle of best friends is as politically, racially, and religiously diverse as the United Nations.
• They sort their friends by continent.
• When this share posts on Facebook, it will be liked by friends from 12 different countries
• Their accent changes depending on who they’re talking to
• Love it or hate it, they have a strong and well-informed opinion on the I.B. system.
• They realize what a small world it is, after all.
