What is a third culture kid (TCK)?

They may be the children of diplomats, major international company workers, military personnel, missionaries or any other group, but they share a lot of the same life experiences. A recognised definition is as follows:

"A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is someone who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside of the parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of a similar background."

So what does that mean? "Significant" means that the growing child has had to live there rather than just visit for a holiday; it's hard to lay down rules, but generally anything from a few months is enough. Of course, the longer the time spent outside of the parents' culture the less the TCK will identify with it. The developmental years are from those of conscious memory up to about 18. Living outside of the parents' culture may not involve crossing a national border - for instance a child growing up in India could easily experience several different cultures. The same is true of many other countries. All this means that the sense of "roots" and belonging is not normally so much to one place as to a group who share their experiences - other TCKs.

TCKs share some common features with children of immigrants, multiracial families, cross-cultural adoption and refugees. Interestingly, their common experiences often mean that TCKs will choose either overseas placements or to live among immigrants and multiracial people themselves when they are old enough to decide.

Above all the TCK is a person in their own right. Although there are some common features most of them have in experiences they vary in the same way as any other group of people. Just as there is no stereotypical Dutch or Brazilian person, so there is no stereotypical TCK. Many of them strongly resist any stereotyping as so much of the attention has focused on the "problems" associated with the lifestyle and in providing remedies to them. To most TCKs, who they are isn't something to be corrected by counselling or something that marks them out as superior or advantaged - it's just normal, that was the way they were brought up. Understanding that upbringing and its consequences is one thing, treating it as some kind of condition to be analysed and treated is something else that the vast majority would reject.

Guinea Bissau to Germany - a story of re-entry

Praise God we can say that we had very positive re-entry experience.

We went to Guinea-Bissau in 1993 with our first child Wera only 7 months old and we left Africa 11 years later with four kids between 5 and 11.

Life in Guinea-Bissau had never been really easy because it is such a poor country and many things just don’t work or don’t exist. But I had always told our children that each country and place has good and positive things, but also those that are difficult and less positive. We need to see and enjoy the good parts and with God’s help make the best out of the difficult ones. So with this in mind we always tried to make home wherever we lived.

Before we left Africa for good we had two years to get used to the idea of going home. When the children heard about leaving for Germany they all wanted to go. However, they always want to go where they aren’t living. Their heart is divided between Africa and Germany and wherever they are they miss half of it.  After being in Germany for a while they commented that it wasn’t that much better than Africa – just different.

When we prepared for leaving Guinea-Bissau we started pretty early with sorting out all our stuff. That was really tough for me: taking every piece of our belongings into my hand and having to decide what to do with it: Sell it – what price? Give it away – to whom? Take it home – packing it away now or later because it is still needed? Throw it away – when? What to leave till the last week because we need it? Etc. etc. Sometimes I wished we had lost everything during the civil war (which was in 1998/99) and it would just all be gone. Now I think all this packing helped me to grieve through the process of saying goodbye, but it wasn’t easy then.

Praise God, he helped us to get everything sorted out at the right time. Some things were hard to leave behind: like our piece of furniture, which we had bought from Thomas’ grandmother’s inheritance. At least I took a photo to take it home. Wera had built a nice big doll’s house and we really thought about taking it home by plane, but when we found another missionary family, who had been looking for a doll’s house and were really happy to receive it, Wera decided to give it to them.

It was good to take time and travel to the interior as a family and say goodbye to folks and places where we had lived before.

Also as a family we used to regularly speak about things and situations ahead. The “Questions for times of transition” (see below) helped us a lot, although we never worked through all of them, but it gave us an idea what to think and talk about. As a family we have some rituals such as our evening devotional and I am sure these things help especially in times of transition. We always tried to tell our children beforehand if anything special like travelling, visitors or special events were ahead. (Sometimes now they complain in Germany if they aren’t informed well in advance when dad is travelling - which is far more often here than in Africa.)

I guess it was helpful for the children to continue with their daily school-routine till nearly the very end of our time in Bissau. Also to have fun in-between, e.g. when we threw all their old school-material away and they could “bathe” in a room full of paper!

When we sorted out their books and their toys we would do it all together and decide what to take and what to leave. If something was really important to one of them, we would take it. The last months we went shopping many times and they bought little things to take home as remembrance. Those were things like post-cards, wooden crafts, flip-flops and other typical things. Also each one of the children always had their rucksack whenever we travelled and they could pack in there whatever they wanted. It always included a bottle of water and some food for the journey, but beside this it was their choice what to take. I used to check with the little ones and advice them, but if they wanted to carry stones - well they could. Sometimes we had to compromise: When Jan wanted to take his big old remote-controlled car we promised him a new one, if he left his old one in Africa. He did.

Because of communication problems with the travel agency we finally had to fly two or three weeks earlier than planned. The church kindly did a very nice farewell-service for us on short notice and we were so impressed by their love and care for us. So by Sunday everyone knew we were leaving on Tuesday and on Monday we had lots and lots of visitors to say goodbye. Praise God we had watched another family’s farewell six months earlier and so we were prepared for that stream of people and could really enjoy it. When our African friends visited they showed their appreciation for us and for the work, which we had done and that definitely helped to leave with a good relationship.

Although the earlier travel-date gave us a bit of pressure in Bissau, we could see Gods guidance in it, as the children only missed one week of the new school term in Germany. That definitely helped for their start in Germany. Also during our last two home-leaves we had been living at the same place and have made friends there – especially at church. So it was a bit of coming home.

Although all our suitcases arrived only a week later, we found big parcels with winter-clothes for the children, which our sending church and my mother in law had sent. So instead of going shopping the kids had to fit on piles of clothes (they didn’t like it) and I was very happy that everyone found what was most needed then.

We really had expected problems at school. Wera went into the 7th  grade and life at secondary school was a bit tough. She came into a big class with no free chair left for her and one teacher commented on her coming: “O dear, another pupil; the form is really big enough already.” Not a nice welcome, but Wera not only managed to find her way but also had very good results in all subjects. Praise God. -  Hanna and Jan went to the 3rd grade at primary school. As they were together in one class they could sit together and help one another. They were really welcomed and the teacher always showed them as the good example for quiet and well-behaved kids to their classmates. Once they could even tell the class about their life in Africa bringing things from there along to school. Especially Hanna made friends and still has contact by mail and email to her classmates there.

After finishing that school term we had to move again due to our task at the German Sending Base. I had always presumed that this move would be more challenging than the one before, but even that went better than I had feared. Of course it took (and takes) time to find the right shops, doctors and offices and it’s incredible how many phone-calls, letters and emails it takes to change all your addresses, but we do feel at home here. Our four children enjoy having other kids so close and they also made friends at their new school.

Life is a challenge and even when you stay at one place you have to face changes. Praise God who so wonderfully has helped us through all our transitions and who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.