Where's Home and What are You?

If you find this question difficult to answer, you may be a TCK (Third Culture Kid) or CCK (Cross Culture Kid).

I recently saw a video about TCK, and it became a language which expressed a lot of how I often feel as an individual.  I thought I should share this with those who have grown up in a multicultural environment (or is raising children in such environment) in case you may find some of these learning relevant and interesting as well.

So Where's Home? A Film About Third Culture Kid Identity

Here are some excerpts from Dr. Ruth E. Van Reken's book: Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

TCKs are blessed with quite a few gifts:
1. Highly mobile and independent

2. Easily adaptable and keenly aware of his/her surrounding
3. Speak multiple language and ability to think "outside the box"
All of these traits can contribute greatly to TCK's success as an adult.

However, frequently uprooting oneself and resettling elsewhere also created some challenges for TCKs, as they often have:

1. Feeling of isolation or guardedness in forming close relationships: "for many TCKs, the pain of losing so many relationships in their lives results in a certain guardedness in future relationships. Consciously we long for the very intimacy we unconsciously run away from for fear of one more loss.  Positive independence can become isolation where we refuse to need others, likely for fear of losing them anyway in the end."

2. ”Itchy feet”…the rootless and restless syndrome. “There” is always better than “here”, also allows us to "run away" from forming close relationships

3. May not deal well with conflicts. It is always been easier to “outwait” them, knowing another move is soon coming, then to deal productively with them.

Sounds familiar?  Don't worry, there's a solution.  Van Reken (a TCK herself) discuss at length the important need for TCKs to have a process to deal with "grief", apparently this is the cause for a lot of the challenges mentioned above.  According to Van Reken, "each time we transition to a different environment, we experience a sense of loss because we (or the others) are leaving, even though the transition also involves the gain of what we will encounter on the other side. The main issue, however, isn’t the loss. That is part of life. But often our losses have not been validated (as the loss coming from a relative’s death might be validated) or we had no way that we knew of to deal with these losses as they happened. For that reason, the effects of them accrue. We can anesthetize ourselves to the conscious pain for quite awhile using the various responses we do but eventually they catch up with us. Meanwhile, our very reactions to try to avoid feeling this pain have often resulted in our pushing others away and we only increase our ultimate pain."  This is why, it's important to deal with those "losses" even if it has been a long time since.

For me, the biggest takeaway is that there are always two sides to a coin.  Having the opportunity to be exposed to different culture and developing a broader world view is definitely a blessing in my opinion; however, in exchange, we have to accept the certain "side effects" from the constant movement that allowed us to see the world.  As long as we recognize it, understand its root, and learn to accept / deal with it, we can live our lives to the fullest and get the best of both worlds!