TCK Research, Part 3

[author][author_info]Our guest blogger for this series is Sheryl O’Bryan. Sheryl has been involved in TCK education since 1988, both as a classroom teacher in Bouake, Cote d’Ivoire, and for the past 10 years as TCK Coordinator for WorldVenture. In her down time, Sheryl likes to sleep in, hang out with TCKs, eat dark chocolate, drink coffee, collect new stamps in her passport, and blog, and doodle with zen tangles. She’s less fond of reading contracts and packing, which is what she’s been doing in most of her free time lately.[/author_info] [/author]

This is the third and final installment in our series about how the characteristics of TCKs have changed over the years. Recently a group of Third Culture Kid (TCK) caregivers, educators, and TCKs spent three days looking at the definition of a TCK and the attributes generally assigned to this unique people group.  They tackled questions of relevancy, wording, and change. They reviewed a ream of answers generated from a survey of over 500 TCKs under the age of 30.  Here we continue to explore the characteristics.

Identity and Relationships

Most cultures identify themselves with a singular piece of geography.  Bolivians point to their place in South America as readily as Michiganders point to a place on their hand.  The Third Culture lacks that luxury.  The dreaded “Where are you from?” often causes as much anxiety for a TCK as answering the seemingly simple “What’s your favorite color?” for a comedic knight.

Pressure to Explain   Simple queries for the monocultural rarely elicit simple answers for the TCK.  The pause between the question and the answer is pregnant with variations on an answer.  Even the extroverted TCK faces emotional exhaustion in juggling possible answers with the questioner’s possible responses—especially in new places where introductions are frequent.  Questions of “How much of my life do I want to reveal/explain?” and “How many questions do I want to answer?” and “Will this answer somehow ostracize me?” gallop through the mind simultaneously with all the possible answers to both these questions and the original one.  This often results in a curious combination of extreme guardedness and excessive vulnerability.

Doghouse Diaries, “Where Are You From?”, Creative Commons Attribution.

(Click on picture to see larger)

The Missing  TCKs often identify with what is not present.  In Africa they identify as Americans.  In the States they proudly identify as Africans.  The tendency is to focus on what’s missing.  Overseas a discovery of a treat from their passport country results in great rejoicing.  A half day’s drive to a good host country market in their passport country is a good day.   This tendency to identify with the absent often isolates the TCK and exacerbates feelings of loneliness.

Different Discourse   The TCKs monocultural peers frame time differently and enter relationships differently than they do.

Most TCKs contextualize their lives by geography while their non-TCK peers contextualize their lives by time.  It’s not uncommon to hear a Canadian describe an event by saying, “When I was in grade 5 . . . “  A TCK’s sentence is more likely to begin, “When I lived in Senegal . . .”  This is often perceived by the non-TCK as bragging and puts the TCK in an unrelatable category.  Often the TCK feels an intense loneliness on the heart level because he can’t tell his heart stories in context.

Time Factors   Being acutely aware of time and the proven ability of their lives to change quickly, the TCK often pushes through the initial stages of friendship faster than monoculturals.  Two tendencies have surfaced in this area.  The first is to quickly move to the deep stuff of friendship while often overwhelming the befriended.  The second is to invest in what one TCK termed “disintegrating community”—other highly mobile people who expect to leave or be left.

Family   The vast majority of TCKs have a closer relationship with their immediate family than most of their monocultural counterparts.  Cultural isolation, shared joy and grief, and international living often combine to create a strong sense of belonging in the family unit that isn’t easily replicated in a monocultural experience.

Developmental Grief

While grief is common to all, the grief TCKs live with is different than that of their passport country peers.  Generally monoculturals experience grief occasionally.  There are specific grief inducing events—a relative dies, a pet is lost, a house burns down.  TCK grief differs; it is woven into the fabric of their identity.

Grief for the TCK is usually multiple, simultaneous, complex, and frequent.  Many TCKs can also add solitary, hidden, and toxic to the list.  They know there’s always more grief to be had.  One TCK said, “It’s a buffet—take as much as you want.”  There is always something to grieve.

This does not mean TCKs are a morose bunch always slumped over in the corner waiting for the sky to fall.  When they learn to grieve well, they become resilient and healthy.  It’s when grief becomes a place of stopping and stunting that it is toxic.

Ironically developmental grief leads to another loss—the loss of being understood.

Leave-taking

Technology   Technology’s growth and pervasiveness reduce the TCKs perceived need for good leave-taking skills and practices.  Facebook and its social network cousins lend a sense of continued connectedness.  Saying good-bye doesn’t seem necessary when a chat, a status update, or a photo is just an internet connection and a click away.

More TCK caregivers are aware of and actively trying to teach their charges good closure skills.  More TCKs, however, don’t perceive the need to “build their RAFT,” because they’ll be able to connect differently.  It takes a while for them to learn the truth that this lack of good closure leads to more unresolved grief.

Short-term Phenomena   While there are many positives that can come from one to five year international commitments, there is also a great negative impact.  More families serving short-term mean more good-byes, more leaving and being left, more transition—even for the more stationary TCK.  The tendency to resist geographical roots and new relationships has a greater impact than ever before.

Abrupt Endings    Evacuations are more prevalent than ever before.  They occur because of political unrest, medical necessities, deteriorating safety conditions, and war.  It is not unusual for a TCK to experience three evacuations before graduating from high school. These situations preempt good leave-taking practices and leave one more set of grievous situations in their wake.

The TCK of the 21st century shares the same framework as TCKs from previous eras.  The words that defined Rudyard Kipling define the 16-year-old sitting next to you on your next intercontinental flight.  How that definition is lived out is nuanced as differently as a handwritten letter delivered via the postal system and a private message on Facebook.  As we live into the 21st century the definition of a TCK will remain the same, but its nuances will continue to grow to fit the bodies living it.

Thank you, Sheryl, for taking the time to write these blog posts based on this research.

Now it’s your turn. What changes have YOU observed in the characteristics of TCKs over the past 10 to 20 years?

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