So, you’re not a teacher, but you want your TCK (Third Culture Kid) to be able to go back to her passport country for a semester of school, university, or perhaps just the option for her to live there easily when she is an adult. One of the benefits of cross-cultural life is having perspectives from multiple backgrounds, but you’re afraid your TCK is so disconnected from her passport country that she may not be able to assimilate to her “own” country.
A big part of that is language and culture. Your TCK likely picks up her passport language from you or your spouse, but not everyone feels confident teaching their child to read, or homeschooling to ensure their child has the education their passport country requires for university. If you’re not a TCK yourself, it may surprise you how much language and culture is taught by the community you live in. There are idioms that your uncle taught you, a way of behaving in certain places that you learned by being there with other members of the community: the way one behaves in school, on public transportation, in a shop, at a funeral—these things are culturally informed and taught by the whole community with a shared culture.
This may feel overwhelming as a parent of a TCK. “How am I supposed to replace an entire community of teachers for my kid?” you may wonder. Don’t worry. You can’t. And you don’t need to. Sure, you need to be intentional about teaching language and some culture, but one of the gifts of being a TCK is having an outside view of a culture that is seen as your “own.” So, do what you can, remembering that your TCK will have different struggles and advantages because of their upbringing, and that’s okay. That said, there are some ways you can teach your TCK her passport language and culture abroad.
Here are three tips to help teach your TCK her passport language and culture:
1. Take (even small) opportunities as they arise.
When your child asks why you do something one way while all of her friends in your host country do it another way, take the opportunity to explain culture. This helps your TCK differentiate between the host culture she interacts with daily, the culture of their home, and the culture of their passport country. It can lead into a conversation that teaches your child more about the values you hold as a family.
2. Small, regular lessons are better than trying to shove a bunch of information in your kids before you visit your passport country.
Say your child is enrolled full-time in school in her host country. Fifteen minutes daily of working through some free printables from Pinterest can seem like an insignificant amount of time, but if she’s getting that manageable amount of exposure, it can really make a difference over time. This is especially true if you are intentional and strategic with what you are doing with your child in those fifteen minutes a day.
Trying to do a crash-course over the summer isn’t working with the grain of your child’s brain, and ultimately won’t yield the results you or your child want. That will just frustrate both of you. Growing slowly and steadily is always best.
Once your child is able to read in her passport language, exposing her to books (and e-books) that are classics from her passport country, or history books will allow her to grow in an understanding of that national narrative and culture.
3. Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize.
What are the most important goals for your TCK? Is it knowing the language their grandparents speak? Is it university opportunities in your passport country? Is it life skills in a passport country? What is the importance in ratio to the learning your child needs in your host country? That ratio should show up in the time they spend learning. If you haven’t read my blog post on helping TCKs through culture stress or in figuring out how to choose educational plans for your kids, check them out here and here, respectively.
Essentially, list your long-term goals for your child in order of importance, and put the effort in. Be prepared to sacrifice to make those most important things happen. Maybe it’s worth hiring a tutor for your TCK. Maybe it’s worth changing your educational plan to incorporate more of your child’s passport language. It may even be worth moving to a city with an international school, or sending your TCK to boarding school. Do the research to find out what’s best for your family.
Remember, it is worth the investment of time and effort of thinking strategically about your kids’ upbringing. As you’ve chosen a non-conventional lifestyle overseas, your children may require non-conventional approaches to their education. And an investment in your child’s future is never a waste.
Your turn!
What are some ways you are helping your TCK learn her passport language?
How do you find balance in your family?
If you don’t have a TCK, what are some ways that you or your kids’ can learn more about another culture?
One of the reasons for this is with so much changing in the day to day ways we interact with our world (geez, thanks COVID-19) that our brains no longer work on “auto-pilot” and now have to spend more energy to make decisions.
The same is true for those entering a new culture, which is why this blog post is helpful for not only ex-pats raising TCKs (Third Culture Kids), but also all parents during the coronavirus pandemic.
This concept is explored more in this article shared about how the stress of living through the COVID-19 pandemic is comparable to culture shock. Also, I recently read Lauren Wells’ book “Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids” and I highly recommend it for any parent of a TCK.
In this post, I want to share a guide for working through culture stress with TCKs that I learned from this book and from my research and observations of TCKs in general.
Read on for your 3 tips to work through culture stress with your TCK.
What’s the destination for TCK? What is the goal of working through culture stress?
The first step to reaching any destination is knowing where we are going. The goal of working through culture stress with our children is that in the end, our children are integrated aTCKs who love diversity, are highly adaptable, resilient, and emotionally healthy.
Let me break down what I mean by that a bit.
Integrated: our kids are a part of the community in which we live, they have a place and feel a sense of belonging and capability in their environment.
Love of diversity: one day our children will be adults who either fear or are excited by diversity. In working through culture stress with our TCKs, we are teaching them to become people who see the beauty and effectiveness of diversity, and who cultivate diversity in the spaces they occupy.
Highly adaptable: by teaching our kids how to adapt to their new culture, we are giving them tools to adapt to any culture and any circumstance that life may throw their way.
Resilient: children are not naturally resilient in the way we often assume. They have to be taught resilience, and that’s where parents, caregivers, teachers, and mentors come in! We can teach our kids how to handle difficult situations.
Emotionally healthy: Children who can name and regulate their emotions will become adults who are not ruled by their emotions.
Now,how do we get there?
A destination is a good place to start, but without a plan, it’s very hard to arrive where we want to go. So what is the “roadmap” to reach the goal stated above?
Below I walk you through 3 tools that will enable you to reach that goal.
1. Prevention:
“An ounce is better than a pound of cure,” the saying goes. And it’s true!
Having a car that has been maintained properly makes getting to your destination SO much easier, and prevents innumerable disasters that could come up along the way.
But what does prevention look like for culture stress?
The most important thing is to have systems in placeto talk about feelings without invalidating those feelings, but teaching kids to work through emotions in a healthy way.
Have a time during the day when you check in with each of your kids; what are they experiencing, and how do they feel about it?
Practice asking good questions of your kids and really listening to their answers.
Maybe every night at dinner, everyone in the family shares the high and low points of their day.
Another prevention tool is helping your kids set expectations. Verbally prepare your children when you are going into a new situation, and give them ways to appropriately communicate their feelings to you.
Maybe your self-conscious child gets stared at for their different skin or eye color when you walk to school with her, or even has her skin or hair touched by strangers.
Maybe your sensitive child gets overwhelmed by the all the sights, sounds, smells and textures of the market.
As much as possible, give them a way to know what to expect and how to communicate what they are feeling in those moments with you. Of course, since you are also still learning what to expect in your host country, it is important to do the work of learning together.
2. Partnership:
When I’m taking a road trip, I always prefer having someone with me, experiencing things alongside me, helping me navigate my way to the next pit stop, and just for the company on what could otherwise be a lonely ride.
The same is true of entering a new culture.
We can do the work of being a student of our host culture together, alongside our children, rather than excluding them. Talk about your observations of the culture with your kids, being careful not to pass ethnocentric judgment. “What is something you’ve noticed today that happened differently than you expected?”
We can learn together how to navigate this new way of life, and present it as an exciting opportunity for our children. You may be surprised…kids are incredibly observant! Two (or three or five) heads are better than one. Your kids can be great assents to your own culture-learning process, and you to theirs, if you partner together in this opportunity.
Basically, the more you can do together, the better!
3. Parroting:
Teaching by modeling to your kids is like giving them a clear map with a highlighted route, or clear road signs that show our kids what to expect ahead.
When it comes to parenting, you already know: much more is caught than taught.
With regard to cultural learning, it is especially important to remember this. Your response to culture stress informs the way your children will respond to culture stress in a greater way than the way you tell them to respond to culture stress.
In other words, kids are much more likely to “parrot” your responses to the culture, whether they are positive or negative. When you are frustrated with the stress of the overwhelming feeling of just wanting one thing in your life to feel normal again, remember to be careful with how you respond.
Be honest with your kids about your feelings: “Mom is feeling frustrated right now because I’m still learning to navigate the systems in this culture. But I’m going to take a few deep breaths and try again tomorrow.” Narrate your own feelings as well as your child’s, and remind them (and yourself) that emotions in themselves are not bad, but are indicators to us, like road signs.
Just because we are frustrated with the way our host culture does something, doesn’t mean that your feelings or the culture are wrong. The more we can identify our emotions without attributing blame to our host cultures, the more healthily we can interact (and model interactions for our kids) with our host culture.
This also works with narrating your kids’ emotions. “It seems to me that you are disappointed right now. Would you like to talk about what you were expecting and what happened instead?” Keeping the door open for communication is key to parenting, and especially when navigating a new culture.
Let’s sum it up!
The more we learn to read the road signs, the more aware we become of our subconscious beliefs and motivations. Using these three tools of Prevention, Partnership, and Parroting will ultimately, enable your TCK (AND you too) to become the most emotionally healthy TCK they can be!
Your Turn!
Do you have TCKs?
What do you find is most helpful when working through culture stress with them?
What books have you read on the topic?
What from this blogpost have you found most helpful?
I am a lover of words and stories, student of culture, amateur photographer, adult cross-cultural kid, English tutor to TCKs (Third Culture Kids), and aspiring foodie. We will probably be instant friends if you give me good coffee, invite me to cook with you, or start a conversation with me about personalities, culture, and how the two intersect. I’m a life-long nerd, believer, and creative-in-the-works. I am all about the journey, so traveling and cross-cultural living is always something that has captured my heart and inspired my imagination.
In 2016, after teaching in an inner-city school and needing a change of pace, I spent a year abroad in Izmir, Turkey with a friend. I absolutely fell in love with the city and the people. The conveniences of a big city with a friendly, slow-pace-of-life atmosphere is all found between the mountains and the sea. What’s not to love? So, after my year of adventure, I knew I wanted to come back to Izmir to live.
Positioned on the perch of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, Turkey is both a mix of cultures, and a unique culture all its own. The more I learn, the more I want to learn, and this desire to learn is what drives me to write. As a pretty quiet person, I write to learn, to discover, and to process. As someone who grew up in a cross-cultural context, Turkey’s diversity and mix of cultures is something I personally relate to. Plus, if you’ve ever tasted Turkish food, you know that it is definitely something to write home about. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the Funks’ blog and to grow and learn in the process.
Learning about other foreigners and expats living in Turkey and their TCKs’ educational opportunities.
*Note: If you are a Turkish citizen reading this post, foreign families in Turkey are under the same requirements as Turkish citizens. It is not compulsory for foreigners to send their students to public schools, and they do have the options to homeschool.
The school bell rings… or maybe the sound of mom fixing sandwiches in the kitchen signals a lunch break. Living abroad can mean rethinking what you assumed about education coming from your passport country.
Some parents can feel overwhelmed when they are presented with the options available. Questions like these floats around in their heads:
“Should we send him to the public school down the street to learn language?”
“I don’t like the curriculum at the more affordable school, but I could never be a homeschool mom.”
“Our TCK wouldn’t go to a private school in our passport country, but since my company pays an extra living stipend for expats, is that the best option for her here?”
For those who may be unfamiliar with the terminology, a TCK, or Third Culture Kid, is a child who grows up for a significant part of her life in a country that is not her passport country.
The “third culture” created in the home is neither entirely the culture of the passport country, nor is it entirely the culture of the country of residence. An ‘aTCK,‘ or adult Third Culture Kid, is an adult who grew up with the TCK experience as opposed to adult expatriates who may or may not have lived abroad as a child. There are so many unique benefits and challenges to being or raising TCKs. One of those is the educational opportunities available to a TCK, often in a second or third language.
As someone who was a teacher in the States (and always a teacher and learner at heart) I am passionate about education. With some of my expat friends here in Turkey, that passion often comes out when I spend time reading with their kids, reinforcing lessons I know they are teaching their kids, and asking and answering good questions. So, I asked a few of them to share their educational journeys with me.
I synthesized their answers into five tips to help guide any parents of TCKs who may be struggling to decide what is best for their family.
But first, a little bit about the families:
MOMS: All of the following quotations are from expatriate moms who live (or have lived) in Turkey. Each of these parents has begun the process of thinking through how best to educate their TCKs. Two of the women who shared with me are aTCKs themselves, and I was particularly interested in their experience with education and how they plan to educate their children.
KIDS: The ages of the TCKs range from newborns to high school kids. Some have only known life in Turkey. Some experienced the majority of their childhood in Turkey and have returned to their passport country. Some have been in Turkey for a relatively short time and are still learning the language. Some can speak Turkish and are in an international school learning a third language. Some kids went to a private preschool, some public preschool, both to acquire language. Some moved from preschool into homeschool, or public elementary school, or private. Some parents foresee different educational journeys for each of their children. Some are grateful that their kids are all in the same boat. Everyone’s journey is different, and everyone that I interviewed is still on the journey.
From watching families make these decisions, and from my interviews with these moms, here are the top five tips I’ve learned in making educational decisions for your family.
1. Research all the options.
There may be resources you don’t know are available. It could be a private school that you’d never heard of, special educational funds available for expats via your company, another expat from your passport country who is willing to tutor your child in her first language. Your options may be limited, but ask around and you may find that they are less limited than you thought. You may even find that the options are more abundant and enriching than what you would have chosen in your passport country.
2. Consider your goals for your family and your children.
Ask the questions that are relative to your family and lifestyle:
Is it important for your children to learn the local language?
Or are you on a military base, expecting to move to a new country in the next few years?
In what areas do your individual children need consistency?
Where do you see the need for them to grow?
Remember that you are this child’s parent for a reason: you have insights into their strengths, weaknesses, interests, and you can help them to grow in areas they would never expect of themselves.
3. Ask for advice, pray, and trust God.
There may be differences in how schooling works in your country of residence versus your passport country that you would never know if you didn’t ask. If you know a teacher, ask questions about the education philosophies of different school options, the class sizes, the length of the school day. Tour different types of schools, research what homeschooling options are available to you.
Personally, I suggest that parents pray about the decision and trust that God has made you the parents of these little ones for a reason. I believe as a parent, you have a particular insight into your children’s minds and hearts. He can give you the wisdom to make a good decision.
4. Every child is different.
Take into consideration the personalities, strengths and challenges for each of your children individually. It may be that you end up choosing the same schooling option for all of your kids, but it may be harmful to start with that assumption.
Don’t be afraid to include your child in some of these conversations, especially if he is old enough to understand the options. Seek out the answers to these questions together:
What kind of learning environment is she comfortable in?
What kind of school would help him grow?
5. Don’t be afraid to try something different than others and allow yourself the option to change course, if needed.
Maybe you have a lot of expatriate friends, and they are all content to educate their children in the same way. Maybe it will be helpful for your TCK to be a part of that community. Maybe it would be best for your child to do schooling differently.
Feel the freedom to make that decision, knowing that doesn’t have to be permanent. Changing schooling options every year or in the middle of a year to find a best fit may bring unnecessary transition stress to your TCK, but you needn’t feel locked into an option just because you started with it.
An interview with an ‘aTCK’ (adult Third Culture Kid) viewpoint for her own TCKs:
I also talked with a new friend who has the great vantage point of being not only an aTCK (adult Third Culture Kid) herself, but also an educator to TCKs and mother to a TCK! Since she has this unique perspective, I wanted to leave you with her thoughts on education abroad. Here is our interview:
Nia: What is your passport country? What country (or countries) did you grow up in? Where do you live now?
Grace: My passport country is S. Korea. I grew up in Turkey, went to boarding school in Germany for 6 years, Korea for university, and am back in Turkey.
Nia: What was your educational experience growing up (public, private, boarding, international, home school, etc.)? Did it change as you got older? Why or why not?
Grace: I attended a local preschool, an American military school for Kindergarten-3rd grade, school in Korea for 4th grade, a small [international] school in Izmir for 5th and 6th, and a boarding school (Black Forest Academy) for 7th through 12th grade.
Nia: What did you appreciate from your educational experience? What would you do differently for your own children? What effect do you think your educational circumstances have had on you?
Grace: I appreciate my early exposure to Turkish and English. My boarding school experience was a personal time of healing where I felt I belonged and I wasn’t the “odd one out.” I would want my child to attend the school I attended, but I wouldn’t want him to be at a boarding school. I think times have changed and media has brought people closer together so he does not need to go to a boarding school to feel the sense of belonging that I did.
Nia: As an educator of Third Culture Kids, what do you see as the pros and cons of the educational opportunities available when people live abroad?
Grace: Pros: [One] can get a faith-based education, can find a like-minded community, be in a safe environment, be exposed to the universal church and a truly multicultural experience.
Con: [T]here is a sense of a “bubble” and being removed from the local community and language.
Nia: What do you enjoy about teaching Third Culture Kids? What are the challenges?
Grace: I love how vibrant TCKs are and I feel honored to be able to relate with some of their experiences. A challenge is working in and with such a tight-knit community and the ramifications for the kids and adults.
Nia: How do you plan to think through your child’s educational experiences?
Grace: I want my child to be safe and happy. Those are my priorities and I hope to work through whatever situation I am faced with when my child becomes of school age and choose what is best.
Nia: What advice do you have for any families struggling to decide how to educate their children in a different country?
Grace: As expatriates, we sometimes feel driven into a corner when faced with options for education. It can be difficult to deal with guilt when thinking about our children’s education. Instead of thinking that our children’s education was the ONLY option available, trusting God and trusting that it was the BEST option.
Now your turn!
Did you find any of these tips helpful or encouraging?
What tips would you add?
If you are an expat with school-age kids, what is your story and how did you decide to go that route? Please share!
I am a lover of words and stories, student of culture, amateur photographer, adult cross-cultural kid, English tutor to TCKs (Third Culture Kids), and aspiring foodie. We will probably be instant friends if you give me good coffee, invite me to cook with you, or start a conversation with me about personalities, culture, and how the two intersect. I’m a life-long nerd, believer, and creative-in-the-works. I am all about the journey, so traveling and cross-cultural living is always something that has captured my heart and inspired my imagination.
In 2016, after teaching in an inner-city school and needing a change of pace, I spent a year abroad in Izmir, Turkey with a friend. I absolutely fell in love with the city and the people. The conveniences of a big city with a friendly, slow-pace-of-life atmosphere is all found between the mountains and the sea. What’s not to love? So, after my year of adventure, I knew I wanted to come back to Izmir to live.
Positioned on the perch of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, Turkey is both a mix of cultures, and a unique culture all its own. The more I learn, the more I want to learn, and this desire to learn is what drives me to write. As a pretty quiet person, I write to learn, to discover, and to process. As someone who grew up in a cross-cultural context, Turkey’s diversity and mix of cultures is something I personally relate to. Plus, if you’ve ever tasted Turkish food, you know that it is definitely something to write home about. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the Funks’ blog and to grow and learn in the process.
