Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds

This book is invaluable for anyone who is or cares about a third culture kid (TCK): one who has "spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' cultures". This experience is common to children of missionaries, parents who work for international corporations, foreign service, aid organizations, educators, media representatives, military service, or whatever takes them out of their home country for an extended period of time. This TCK experience can also happen actually to children who remain in their home country but live in a different culture within it, e.g. those whose parents work on an Indian reservation in the U.S. while not being born to that culture.

Many of the differences the reader would probably be aware of, such as differences in eye contact, handshaking, pointing and other mannerisms. I remember walking out of a training about Native American communication where we talked about the fact that direct eye contact can be a sign of disrespect to elders in that culture, and having a conversation with a young man who made no eye contact with me. My whole body strongly said
"he's lying or hiding something" - not to be trusted. I could THINK all day long about those differences, but had to be sure to pay attention to the responses my body was having and not react based on my ignorance. The authors of this book go more deeply into the effect these differences have on relationships, self-esteem, isolation, etc.

Other issues addressed are, e.g. how does one form deep attachments with those around them when they know they are always separated eventually. There is no payoff and lots of pain in forming attachments.

Another example of an unforeseen difficulty certainly is education. One Finnish young man grew up in Taiwan, and chose to complete his post-secondary education and med school in Chicago. English was spoken in all of his schooling and he would have had to compete with Finnish students who had been educated in Finnish to get into med school in his home country, and didn't think he would qualify. He has realized it would be very difficult for him to EVER return to Finland to practice medicine. He does not have a medical vocabulary in Finnish and would be looked down upon by his colleagues for having trained elsewhere.

Restlessness is not a small factor in the lives of TCKs as adults, regarding relationships, careers, and just living arrangements. The norm is to migrate and they would need to look very carefully to determine if it was really time to leave or rather a need to work on the relationship or job and NOT leave. The problem seems to manifest in either the extreme of needing change often, or not ever wanting change again. One woman married a man with about 8 jillion stamps on his passport, thinking they would enjoy a lifetime of travel, only to discover that he never wanted to leave the country again.

This book does talk about the advantages of being a TCK also, altho some of those things are probably more well known. Obviously an increased knowledge and experience base is an advantage, along with some social skills developed from the need to meet new people. What comes up for me is that that is the person I want in a staff meeting, able to bring different perspectives. Also, a TCK often has a worldwide network of friends. TCKs of course have their own culture with other TCKs when they get together, which can be very helpful for them.

The authors look at both weaknesses and strengths that develop for many TCKs and offers some helpful ideas for dealing with some of the grief and loss issues. I personally found this book to be very interesting reading whether or not the reader has a personal interest in the issue. 5 out of 5 stars. ( )

My Zumba instructor suggested this book to me as a fellow person who spent some time abroad as a youth and was raised in a multicultural environment. It goes over the characteristics of these 'third culture' people and provides explanations for their differences. ( )

an extremely useful for all people who grow up between cultures ( )

2007

http://amiralace.blogspot.com/2005/04/third-culture-kids.html ( )