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On the Children's Mental Health Network website I came across an interesting article The Trouble with Third Culture Kids. Here's part of what it said:
"Rebecca Grappo, an educational consultant who
specializes in the placement of these children, says there are three
basic things all children need: belonging, recognition and connection.
For TCKs, these basic needs are ripped away with each move. Powerless
in the decision to relocate, their many losses are often not
acknowledged even by their own parents, and the main problem is
unspoken, unrecognized, shunted aside.
It looks like depression, but it’s not. This is the face of TCK grief.
And, according to Ruth Van Reken, unresolved grief is
the most urgent mental health issue facing TCKs -- the children as well
as the adults they will become."
So there are many losses that third culture kids go through. There's grief. There's something that looks like depression. Maybe sometimes it is a depression. There's a good article on Denizen "Dealing with depression as a TCK student". The article includes 5 tips on how to stay mentally healthy as a TCK when you are feeling challenged.
This week I read a post by a third culture kid called Hippie in Bloom. A friend of hers who also grew up making international moves as a child wrote: “I don’t like it much. Life would’ve been much easier if I were one of those people who never left the country and didn’t care about stuff.”
The problem is that we can not change the past, so we need to find a way to deal with it. I think that's one of the challenges that we, (adult) third culture kids have to face.
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Image thanks to grietgriet at Morgue File
