Empowering Parents and Supporting Third Cultural Kids: my Journey into Counselling and Effective Communication

Good morning colleagues and clients,

Today I would like to share some reflections, regarding the beginning of my journey as a counselor and coach. After completing my training, I posed specific questions to myself -questions I was already familiar with through my own parenting experience. These enquires have become guiding principles, a framework that allow me to provide a better service to my clients.

During sessions it is essential to understand how the parents of TCkids "rebuild" their daily life when returning to their home countries. That means:

• Which kind of attention they can provide to their children

• Their ability to understand their children 's disorientation

• Their capacity to truly listen their children

• How they communicate the emotional status of their children to educational Institutions

• What kind of "listening" they find at their children's schools

• Which kind of support their receive from their original families (grandparents, aunts, uncles etc..)

• Whether they recognize the need to seek specialized help on these issues or simply relay on the specialist recommended by others.

  
  

  Understanding the anger, frustration, and anxiety of these young people is crucial for supporting their new life into a society that, for many of them, has often been experienced as a "vacation" or a "stand by period" between relocations.

  
  

  It is essential to remember that parents face their own challenges as:

• Mental difficulties on facing the idea of "going home" after being an expat for many years

• They could suppress their discomfort and ignore it

• They could exert pressure for their children to quickly adapt to the local society

• It is not always easy to be able to talk with someone that truly understand their past experiences

• They could struggle to find interest and engagement in others.

For therapeutic or coaching support to be truly effective, I strongly believe it must consider these aspects. The best results are achieved when all the family members partecipate- respecting their roles- in the therapeutic or coaching process requested by the client.