TCK

 

Pollock & Van Reken (2009) were the first to defined 'Third Culture Kids' as

'A person who has spent a significant part of his/her development years outside parents’culture.'

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Today they are no longer just children of soldiers or career diplomats as in the 1950s, but they are children of professionals who move following assignments obtained by the companies they work for, children of teachers or parents who have chosen to have a nomadic life.

They are individuals who have unique perspectives on life.

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Being a TCK does not only involve problems but also advantages such as:

• Being independent,

• Often more able to take care of themselves,

• They are often more adaptable and flexible because they are used to moving around and adjusting to new environments.

• Often they have a strong sense of self; they know who they are and what they want, so they're not as easily influenced by peer pressure

• Often they are more mature than their peers because they have been exposed to more challenges and difficulties in their lives, so they are better equipped to handle problems independently

• They can observe the world from different prospectives.

• They might be more likely to understand and empathize with people from other cultures, and as a result, they are less judgmental.

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Being open-minded and sensitive to cultural cues can be a real asset in today’s increasingly connected world.

On the other hand, frequent mobility, if it is not managed adequately, can mean the emergence of problems since third-culture kids can also feel like they 'don't quite fit in anywhere'. They never feel like they truly belong anywhere because they come from different places.

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One of the most difficult questions for them to answer can be “Where are you from?” because they do not feel that they come from a specific place.

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They are kids able to forge ties with people of other cultures, but in reality they do not belong to any particular country. They may have assimilated elements of different cultures during their experiences but often struggle with a feeling of uncertainty related to their identity as they cannot feel connected to any particular culture.

Some of them have started moving from one country to another since birth, and when they reach adolescence, they struggle to find their place in the world, especially if they return as teenagers to live in one of their parent's countries of origin.

It is difficult to return to one's parent's country of origin without feeling like an outsider because people would see these boys and girls as someone new. Realistically, after living most of their life in other places, that place would probably feel like a foreign place to them. After all, they have always been outsiders looking in and observing things and sometimes it can be a bit scary not having a place to call home.

They would periodically say goodbye to friends and teachers or other important people in their lives due to their frequent mobility. They had to leave home and get ready to quickly build a new routine in another country, in a new school. They have lost pets or had to give them to other families and have not had time to live and process the loss and their grief before facing the new chapter of their lives.

Often the parents have tried to overcome their guilt by promising new friends, a bigger room, new pets, and new benefits but the sense of loss remains and this along with other feelings that arise needs to be dealt with in a safe space. These feelings of loss and suffering due to being removed from a familiar environment need to be addressed to prevent these feelings from re-emerging with negative effects on the individual's future life.

These kids need to find a safe space where they can talk about their pain and the sense of detachment they feel, the sense of loss experienced, where they can vent their sadness without feeling catapulted forward forcefully into the next chapter of their lives.

These kids may have problems socializing or have difficulty maintaining long-term interpersonal relationships. Third culture kids are used to friends coming and going. It’s just a fact of life when you live in multiple places.

Third culture kids find it hard to attach themselves to anything because they know it is all temporary.

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When they try to fit in, they get rejected by their peers for being different. They don’t understand the cultural references and it can’t be translated to what they want to say. The extent of the rejection means that they essentially give up on their home or host culture.

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It is a common misconception that because third-culture kids are exposed to multiple languages, they would be able to learn any language easily. It is often quite the opposite. The constant change in environment and language can make it harder for third culture kids to learn new languages also if it could be true that third culture kids end up being bilingual or multilingual.

A child might not be fluent in the language of his birth country, but on the other hand, he/her may not have the same level of proficiency as a native speaker in the current country. As a result, one might find it a struggle to express himself/herself or be often judged by others and seen as less competent. It can be frustrating to know that they are perfectly capable of communicating in multiple languages but still be told that they are not good enough.

 

Some studies (Kristie Marie Little's research) have shown that some TCKs suffer from an "insecure attachment style" especially if they moved around often during the first 18 years of life. The defense mechanisms they may have developed over the years to protect themselves from frequent goodbyes may have helped them but they may also prevent or make it difficult to form lasting intimate relationships over the years.

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It may happen that some TCKs, once they become adults, at a certain point detach themselves from family members or companions or friends and are unable to fully understand the reason for this detachment and begin to question themselves without being able to understand that their way of being and acting is linked to previous experiences and their frequent mobility during their developmental years.

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For some third-culture children, the sense of uprootedness and wandering can be so strong that they end up becoming an expatriate as an adult. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that these individuals will never feel truly settled anywhere.